Salazar Wants to Cut Lifeline to Cuba

Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Rep. María Salazar

Rep. María Elvira Salazar (R-FL) has sent a letter to the State Department and the U.S. Treasury to “take legal action” against south Florida companies providing services relating to Cuba. If she gets her way, it would hit Cubans on both sides of the Florida Straits.

Well over a million people of Cuban descent live in Florida, and many of them use U.S. companies to send remittances, food and other goods to Cuba — a lifeline to families on the island.

These companies not only play a role in helping people in Cuba; they also provide jobs in Salazar’s state. In her letter, Salazar accuses them of evading “sanctions on the communist regime in Cuba."

To deliver goods to Cuba, U.S. companies must obtain a license from the Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC). Salazar’s letter is presumably a call to revoke these licenses.

Salazar said her demand for a crackdown on these companies was made at the request of her constituents, although it’s not clear to which constituents she was referring. While many Cubans in Florida support the embargo, polls have consistently shown that they are opposed to measures that cut them off from their families on the island.