WASHINGTON - Today, U.S. Senator Tom Udall, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, released the following statement on President Obama's announcement that he will be the first sitting president in almost 90 years to visit Cuba:
"President Obama's decision to visit Cuba will be remembered in history as an emphatic move to end the outdated Cold War policies of the last century. It marks a sea change in our decades-long relationship with one of our closest neighbors and is something that I have worked for many years to see happen.
"However, while the president's decision to visit is symbolically and historically important, it doesn't do the work that Congress must do to modernize our relationship with Cuba. I will continue to work on the Foreign Relations Committee to push Congress to repeal the outdated laws that prevent businesses from expanding and hinder Americans' ability to travel freely to Cuba. The best diplomats of American values are Americans themselves, and by re-establishing relations with Cuba and opening it to American tourism, trade and commerce, we can truly bring freedom and openness to Cuba."
Udall is a longtime advocate for normalizing diplomatic relations with Cuba and supports legislation permitting U.S. citizens to freely travel to Cuba, efforts to open the Internet, and ending the embargo blocking U.S. trade with Cuba. Udall has traveled to Cuba to meet with Cuban officials, religious and business leaders, entrepreneurs and artists to discuss the impacts of the embargo and travel restrictions on American and Cuban families. Udall met with American prisoner Alan Gross in 2014 shortly before Gross was released from the Cuban jail where he had been held since 2009.
In May, Udall introduced the Cuba Digital and Telecommunications Advancement Act -- or Cuba DATA Act -- that will allow American companies to help Cuba build the 21st-century telecommunications infrastructure necessary in today's global economy and empower Cubans to realize their full potential. He also is a cosponsor of the Agricultural Export Expansion Act to help support and improve the export of American agricultural commodities to Cuba.
