By MATT SEDENSKY and ILEANA MORALES
Associated Press Writers
The worst part of Lis Prado's job is saying no. No to the Cuban-Americans coming to the travel agency seeking to visit ailing parents, the ones trying to get to funerals on the island, the ones hoping to be by a loved one's bedside after an accident.
"We feel like the bad ones," she said, "because we have to tell them no."
But things could soon change at Arenas Blancas International Service. A bill expected to pass the House this week and the Senate soon after would loosen rules on family travel to Cuba made stricter by President George W. Bush in 2004.
The revised rules could be a windfall for businesses authorized by the U.S. government to arrange travel to Cuba, but expatriates inside and outside the travel industry say its biggest effect will be easing strains on families.
"It's not just for the economy," said Asela Prado, the owner of Arenas Blancas and Lis' mother. "It's about the people."
A huge bill wrapping up last year's budget would block enforcement of the Bush-era restrictions. Obama has pledged to sign the legislation, which would allow Cuban-Americans to travel to the island once a year to visit relatives for an unlimited amount of time and spend up to $170 a day while they're there.
Currently, family visits are limited to once every three years for no more than 14 days. Daily spending is capped at $50.
"With those limitations," Asela Prado said, "you feel like a prisoner."
The legislation would also expand the definition of family to include first cousins, aunts and uncles rather than just parents, siblings and grandparents, allowing many more people to travel to the island.
Many here in Miami, the global center of Cuban expatriates, welcome the possibility of loosened rules, though some insist they will not visit the island again until it is free from Communist rule.
Outside the Versailles restaurant in Little Havana, 55-year-old Pedro Lopez dreams of returning to the island he left 30 years ago.
"The smell, the streets, the things I saw as a kid, the friends," he said, remembering his youth. He won't go back yet, but said he thinks it's good that others will be able to.
Others insist Obama and Congress must go further. Tessie Aral, owner of ABC Charters in Miami, said that because of the way the measure is written, she worries individuals won't be prosecuted for traveling to Cuba, but companies arranging the trips may be targeted.
"This is not what President Obama promised," Aral said. "If it only stops enforcement, I still can't sell you a ticket knowing I'm going to break a law."
Cubans have built a life here in neighborhoods where signs and conversations are predominantly Spanish and at gathering spots like Versailles where the pastries and coffee are the way they remember them. But expatriates maintain strong ties to the island, and their relationships have been complicated by the tough travel rules.
Lourdes Orjales works at Damuji Services Inc., a travel agency named for a river near her hometown of Cienfuegos, which she left 41 years ago. She'd like to visit her brother, nieces and nephews more often, but it's her clients who have more compelling needs.
She gestures to the chair on her left in the small office with posters of Cuba in shiny gold frames on the white-paneled walls.
"A man cried in that chair. He couldn't go see his dying mother. She had cancer," she said. "Not everyone would go every year. The ones with emergencies, those are the ones who need to go."
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