Aug

29

Newsweek Gets Confused by OFAC Travel Rules

Posted by at 8:28 am on August 29, 2018
Category: Cuba Sanctions • OFAC

Image via https://pixabay.com/p-1202440/?no_redirect [Public Domain]Last week the State Department changed its travel advisory on Cuba from “reconsider travel” to “exercise increased caution.”  The “reconsider travel” warning was apparently based on the sonic attacks on diplomats in Cuba.  The decision to change to “exercise increased caution” came after the State Department concluded that sonic attacks on private U.S. citizens was unlikely.

Still this business of travel warnings appear to have little, if any, relation to the actual safety of the destination.  There are no warnings about the safety of travel to Belize even though between 2009 and 2016, 16 Americans were murdered in Belize.  That put Belize as the seventh most dangerous country for Americans as measured by its  death rate of 1.02 per 100,000 American tourists.  During that same period, only two people were killed in Cuba giving it a death rate of 0.08 per 100,000 American tourists, approximately 12 times lower than that of Belize.  Of course, given the U.S. homicide rate of  5.3 per 100,000, it’s probably safer to travel to Cuba, or even Belize, than to stay home in the United States.

A number of news sites commented on this change.  But one of them, namely Newsweek, caught my eye when it decided to add this statement about travel to Cuba:

 The only legal way for U.S. citizens to travel there is by applying to the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control for a license under one of 12 categories of travel.

Good grief.  Is Google not working at Newsweek these days?  Those twelve categories mentioned in the quote are for general licenses, you know, the ones that do not require a specific OFAC license application.  In case the Newsweek reporter wanders by and reads this post, here is the link to the OFAC regulation noting that general licenses are available for each of those categories.

So, as you’ve heard before, don’t believe everything you read on the Internet unless, of course, you read it here.

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Copyright © 2018 Clif Burns. All Rights Reserved.
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One Comment:

1. I’d bet fifty CUC that Newsweek has sent personnel to Cuba under the general license at 515.563 within the past five years.

2. In O’Connor’s defense, the distinction between specific and general licenses is easy for non-experts to miss. Several months ago I had a circular and slightly entertaining hour-long phone call with a CBP officer who was adamant that he would accept only a license “on OFAC letterhead,” and not my written declaration and explanation regarding the perfectly applicable general license in Part 515. The concept of general licenses existing in the text of the CACR just wasn’t computing for him–he was positive he needed to see a case-specific document from OFAC. (Fortunately, he then communicated with other USG folks who confirmed that I wasn’t just making stuff up, and he came around before things escalated.)

Comment by Pat on August 29th, 2018 @ 10:24 am