Poll results: Ease up on Cuba travel

MIAMI, April 2 (UPI) -- More and more Cuban Americans in southern Florida want to see travel restrictions lifted and relations with Cuba normalized, a poll released Monday showed.

The Florida International University survey showed 55.2 percent of those asked favor "unrestricted" travel to Cuba while support for the U.S. embargo was the lowest since polling began in 1991, The Miami Herald reported. However, among respondents registered to vote, more than half opposed lifting travel restrictions and favored a U.S. invasion of Cuba.

The poll was financed by Washington's Cuba Study Group and the university's Cuban Research Institute. A total of 1,000 people were polled with a margin of error of 3.2 percentage points.

"People are seeing and recognizing the need to take a new path," said Carlos Pascual of The Brookings Institution, which helped organize the poll.

However, Ana Carbonell, chief of staff of U.S. Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart, R-Fla., said other surveys show a majority only support lifting sanctions if Havana meets some minimal conditions, including free elections and freeing political prisoners.

"This is another one of those annual push polls' done by those who want to unilaterally ease sanctions to benefit the Castro regime, with a business interest," she said to the Herald.