In a country of limits, it is the restriction that many Cubans hate the most: the exit visa that the government requires for travel abroad and can be onerous to get, trapping many Cubans looking to leave even for just a few days.
But now that bureaucratic barrier is on its way out. The Cuban government announced Tuesday that it would terminate the exit visa requirement as of Jan. 13, letting many Cubans depart for vacations, or forever, with only a passport and a visa from the country where they plan to go.
The new policy — promised by President Raúl Castro last year, and finally announced in the Communist Party newspaper — represents the latest significant step by the Cuban government to answer demands for change from Cubans, while also maintaining a significant measure of control.
Cubans can be denied the right to leave for reasons of “defense and national security,” according to the new law, suggesting that dissidents will face the same restrictions as always.
Cuba’s doctors, scientists, military officers and other professionals, who have also long faced tight restrictions on travel, may be ineligible as well because the new policy includes a major caveat allowing the government to limit departures to “preserve the human capital created by the Revolution in the face of the theft of talent applied by the powerful.”
But the new law gives Cubans leeway to stay abroad longer, letting them remain outside the country for two years before losing their rights to property, citizenship and benefits like health care, an increase from 11 months under the current policy.
Analysts say the government is encouraging more Cubans to travel so that they can go earn money elsewhere and return, injecting capital into the island’s moribund economy. Whether that creates a temporary — or permanent — mass exodus, Cubans and experts say, will be determined by how many people have the means and passports to leave, and which countries welcome them.
“The decision to lift the exit visa is a significant one for several reasons, although like most of the new reforms, it depends a great deal on how it is implemented,” said Robert Pastor, professor of International Relations at American University. “Nonetheless, by removing a state barrier to leave, this reform could lead to a large outflow — many of whom will eventually want to come to the United States — or it could begin to allow a circular flow of people that could enhance the economic opening of the island.”
The Cuban government’s earlier small steps toward a market economy have created an opening of measured proportions. There are now hundreds of thousands of small-business owners on the island of 11 million people, but not nearly in the numbers that the government initially said it needed to cut back on the nation’s bloated public payrolls. Moreover, they are hardly tycoons who are independent of the government’s traditional power hubs of the military and the Communist Party.
Especially in Havana, many Cubans have remained skeptical about President Castro’s commitment to change, noting frequently that celebrated new laws — allowing for property sales and entrepreneurship, for example — were later larded with restrictions and taxes that so far have ensured only minority participation.
On Tuesday morning in Havana, skepticism seemed as common as strong coffee cut with chicory. Many Cubans seemed to be greeting the end of the exit visa — known as the tarjeta blanca, or white card — with their usual stance of “We’ll see.” There was no line of unusual proportions at the passport office in Havana, and many Cubans correctly noted that they still faced many hurdles to a legal departure.
“It’s all very good,” said Laydis, 30, an employee at a bank in Havana. “But which interesting country is going to give me a visa?”
Her colleague Maricel, 44, who is eligible for a Spanish passport because her grandparents were from Spain, identified another problem. “Sure, I can go,” she said, “but where am I going to get the money?” After all, the new law says nothing about reducing the fees for all the paperwork needed for a departure, which can cost hundreds of dollars.
American officials said they were still studying the new policy to determine what the impact might be. Several countries besides the United States — including Mexico — have seen an increase over the past few years in migration from Cuba, and the new policy could set off an exit surge to nearby Latin American countries. Many of those emigrants may then try to reach the United States, which is where most members of the Cuban diaspora have settled and which grants legal residency to Cubans who make it to American soil.
Mr. Pastor, a former Latin America adviser for President Jimmy Carter, said the new policy could “put indirect pressure on the United States as an increasing number of immigrants leave the island for third countries with the real intention of coming to the United States.”
Other experts said that leaving Cuba, even without the exit visa requirement, could become more difficult than expected.
“There’s an old saying among migration scholars who studied the Soviet bloc: ‘When the Soviets finally lowered the iron curtain, the West responded not with open arms but by quickly constructing a steel ring around their countries,’ ” said Ted Henken, a professor of Latin American Studies at Baruch College, part of the City University of New York. “It’s easy to condemn Cuba for its policies against the free flow of people, but when Cuba removes its own restrictions, will we redouble our own?”
This report, "Cuba Dropping Its Much-Reviled Exit Visa Requirement," first appeared in the New York Times.
