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Anchor Marco Werman speaks with Miami Herald reporter Frances Robles about the new rules in effect now for travel to Cuba. The new rules allow Americans with family in Cuba to go there as often as they want, and stay as long as they want.

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MARCO WERMAN: I’m Marco Werman. This is The World. New rules are in effect today regarding travel to Cuba. Americans with family on the island can now visit their relatives as often as they like and for as long as they like. Limits on how much money they can send to relatives in Cuba have officially been lifted as well. The Treasury Department in Washington unveiled the new rules yesterday. That’s five months after President Obama first announced that the measures were coming. Frances Robles is a reporter at the Miami Herald. So the trade embargo Frances against Cuba remains so what has actually changed in US policy towards Cuba?

FRANCES ROBLES: What has changed is the ability for Cuban-Americans in the United States to visit their relatives, to send them packages, to send them money. And another major shift is for American telecommunications businesses to be able to do business in Cuba to try to break that information blockade they have in Cuba a bit by allowing American companies to sell products there.

WERMAN: Once on the island though we should mention that US citizens still face one restriction and that is a spending cap of just under $180 per day. So there have been these rule changes. Some things are still in effect. Cuba has its own rules too about what it will accept from the US. For example garden seeds – Cubans won’t allow. Even though the US will allow people to take agricultural seeds down. What is going to happen actually?

ROBLES: Well that’s going to be very interesting. For example, one of the changes that happened yesterday is that you can send more telecommunications items in the gift parcels – things like satellite radios and TVs. Well that’s fine but you know try packing a box with a GPS and satellite telephone, sending it to someone in Cuba and I’d be hard pressed to see the Cuban government allow that in. I just don’t think they would take it. So that you know there is still a little dance there that has to be played with the things that arrive in Cuba and to see whether the Cuban government is going to say that this is something that they’ll accept.

WERMAN: So Obama announced these measures back in April. Presumably Cuban-Americans have been anticipating these changes that were announced yesterday for a few months. Are they ready with their packages and money transfers and jumping on the next plane to Havana?

ROBLES: I think they’ve been ready since April. That’s one of the big confusions – that when this was announced everyone thought that it took effect in April. And so right away people were showing up at shipping agencies with their boxes of goods to send to their relatives and they were being turned away. A lot of people didn’t realize that the rules didn’t take effect until the rules … . Until the rules are written, the rules don’t take effect. And so they weren’t written and published until yesterday.

WERMAN: From the Cuban-Americans you have spoken to their in Miami Frances how are they reacting to this news?

ROBLES: You know there is no Cuban-American quote-on-quote reaction to things. You have a community here that has been here for over forty years. They tend to react one way and you have hundreds of thousands of people that have arrived more recently who still have relatives on the island and they react in a very different way. So that’s going to be a real divider. And it’s a divider that I sense that the Cuban-American community, at least the old guard, is a little uncomfortable with because they’re used to being kind of monolithic and they’re not anymore. There’s a number of people who left their parents in Cuba and have been longing to send them items; have been longing to send them clothes and shoes and haven’t been able to for all this time. So of course they reacted very enthusiastically. They were thrilled. And some of the older [INDISCERNIBLE] people feel that it’s too soon to be making concessions to the Cuban government – that Obama shouldn’t take any steps until Raul Castro starts taking some steps. Their feeling is okay let’s see him release political prisoners. Let’s see him you know offer freedom of speech and free and democratic elections. You know ha ha but you know that it is the ultimate goal. And so they feel like well why should we be giving them anything. And so that’s a real point of contention here.

WERMAN: Should these new moves, these new rules, be viewed as a sign that within the year the economic embargo may be lifted entirely?

ROBLES: First of all, Obama has always supported the embargo. He has supported it as a candidate and he has supported it as president. And the second thing is that that would take an act of congress. So I mean I guess President Obama could, if he wanted to, start issuing so many licenses under the embargo so as to make it meaningless but he hasn’t been moving that quickly in that direction. For example academic and cultural travel – he still hasn’t licensed that. And he could. He could have done that with a stroke of his pen six months ago and he hasn’t done it. And it’s interesting to watch that he’s taking very measured slow steps and watching to see what the reactions are out of Havana.

WERMAN: Frances Robles, a reporter at the Miami Herald. Thank you very much.

ROBLES: Thank you Marco.

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