This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Wednesday, April 15th, 2009. I'm Caleb Brown.

The Obama administration has engaged Cuba, lifting travel bans so Cuban Americans can

return to their homeland to visit. So what should be next?

One Carlos Idahl, go, Project Coordinator for Latin America at the Cato Institute, comments.

It has a lot of significance in the sense that it chose the willingness of the White House to engage Cuba, a very different tune from the Bush

administration that actually tighten restrictions on Cuban Americans traveling to the

island and sending remittances there.

So in that same is a very welcome departure from the previous eight years.

However, this measure only affects 1.5 million Cuban Americans, which is not a significant number.

And still the rest of Americans, 99% of the population, are not allowed to travel to Cuba and are not allowed to travel with Cubans.

So I think that the administration should be bolder in pursuing a more aggressive approach towards

the gorming Havana, which means lifting the embargo and

also lifting the travel then.

So much of the concern that I'm hearing about this lifting of this travel restriction is that it will entrench and strengthen

the Castro regime in Cuba?

Well, certainly more people traveling to Cuba and doing tourism there and leaving more dollars

with their families and in local businesses is going to strengthen the Cuban government in the sense that the Cuban

government is going to have more access to US dollars.

However, it's pretty obvious that 47 years of embargo and travel ban have failed to weaken the Cuban

government in any way. So I think that even though certainly some of these money

is going to end up in the coffers of the Cuban government, a lot of this money is going to end up in the covers of the Cuban government.

A lot of this money is also going to end up in civil society.

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