Rubio Responds to Tampa Bay Times

Letter by U.S. Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) to the editor of The Tampa Bay Times:

Tourism props up Castro regime

Last week, this newspaper criticized my opposition to enriching Cuba's Castro regime with American tourism dollars while reiterating your unconscionable position of supporting an Obama administration policy that helps fund the regime's repressive machine. It was an editorial that the tyrants in Cuba surely delighted in reading.

Your paper bemoaned the enhanced scrutiny on "people-to-people cultural exchanges" that had been exposed for itineraries laden with dubious items that included salsa dancing, cigar rolling, rum making and meetings with regime officials. You then claimed that these were legal trips, a misleading assertion in light of the Treasury Department's subsequent rewriting of the regulations governing these trips when rampant abuses were brought to light. The fact is, whether one likes it or not, tourism travel to Cuba remains illegal.

I understand we may never agree on this issue. However, my motivations should be clear to all. Freedom has never been won by weak or appeasing policies. One of the largest sources of funding to the Castro regime is travel to the island by foreign tourists, including Americans. For this reason, and because the State Department has acknowledged the increased risks of unjust imprisonments for Americans visiting Cuba, I will continue to oppose this lucrative windfall that benefits the regime.

As the son of Cuban immigrants, I treasure the freedom my parents claimed for me on the shores of the United States. I will not waver in my support of a Cuba that shares in these same freedoms.