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Dear Representative:
As an Episcopalian, I write to urge your cosponsorship of H.R. 874, the Freedom to Travel to Cuba Act of 2009. The bipartisan bill ends the fifty-year-old ban on American travel to Cuba.
The travel ban has done nothing, over the past five decades, to weaken the Cuban government or to prompt reforms in political or human rights. Most importantly, the Cuban people have been harmed by the ban because they have been cut off from the friendship and support of the American people. A majority of Americans, a majority of Cuban Americans, and a broad array of human-rights, religious, and humanitarian groups support ending the ban.
As a person of faith, I have a particular interest in ending the ban. During the Bush Administration, the ban was extended to include religious groups like the Episcopal Church with longstanding pastoral relationships with their counterparts in Cuba. This interference with the mission objectives of faith communities strikes at the very heart of the American understanding of religious freedom. Church denominations and mission boards, as well as local dioceses and congregations in the U.S., maintain relationships with counterparts around the world, including in Cuba, providing resources and programmatic assistance to individual congregations seeking to fulfill the Church's mission in their own contexts. Limiting religious travel to Cuba makes it impossible for American churches to support their brothers and sisters in Cuba adequately, and harms the very congregations who have suffered so long during fifty years of strain between the U.S. and Cuba.
Ultimately, allowing Americans to travel to Cuba will serve the very democratic outcomes in Cuba for which our nation has been calling for the past five decades. Person-to-person exchanges in the religious, educational, medical, and commercial sectors will strengthen Cuban civil society and empower the people that will play a key role in shaping Cuba's future.
Thank you for your consideration of this important matter.
Sincerely,