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Sgt. wants Cuba travel restriction lifted

An Army National Guard staff sergeant who was denied the opportunity to visit his children in Cuba during a two-week break from the war in Iraq has appealed to the House Hispanic Caucus for help.

Carlos Lazo, who addressed the congressional caucus Thursday, was a medic serving in Iraq in 2004 when the Bush administration changed its policies to no longer allow annual trips back to Cuba to visit family members. He discovered the change while on leave from the war zone when he flew to Miami with plans to make a trip to Cuba to see his two teenage sons. New rules that took effect June 30, 2004, allowed only one trip every three years — with no exceptions.

“They said if they made an exception for me, they would have to make exceptions for everything,” Lazo said. “Before, you could visit every year — one trip a year — and more often for humanitarian reasons. I wasn’t able to see them, and I went back to Iraq.”

After his tour in Iraq ended, Lazo said he still couldn’t make a trip to see his sons because he had last visited in 2001 and three years had not passed.

Rep. Hilda Solis, D-Calif., a Hispanic Caucus member and member of the Cuba Working Group that visited Cuba in December, has been working to help Lazo. She called the travel restrictions “hurtful” and said she hopes there is a bipartisan move to change them.

Last year, the House of Representatives passed legislation that would change the travel restriction, but the Senate never took up the bill, she said. “Now that Democrats are in charge, I hope we can do better.”

Lazo “is really helping our cause, because his is a very compelling case,” Solis said.

Lazo arrived in the U.S. in 1992. He became a U.S. citizen, moved to Seattle and joined the National Guard in 2001. In November 2003, he was mobilized and deployed to Iraq, where he said he was assigned as a medic in support of Marine operations in Fallujah.

At a minimum, the military medic — who, as a civilian, is a counselor for the disabled for Washington state — wants an exception to allow Cuban Americas with family in Cuba to visit them before, during and after a deployment. What he would really like is for the Bush administration to drop the once-every-three-years travel rule.

Lazo acknowledged there are not very many Cuban-American service members who face exactly the same situation, but he said he felt it was important for everyone to have the policy changed.

“As it is right now, your mother could die, and if you have visited Cuba in the last three years, you would not be allowed to go to the funeral,” he said.