Mar 21, 2016 3 min read

Florida and Cuba are only separated by 90 miles – roughly the distance between Washington and Johnstown – yet the number of Americans who have visited the island is pitifully meager thanks to the long-running embargo the United States has maintained against Cuba. This musty relic of the Cold War has severely limited travel between the two countries, frozen all trade and severed financial ties. With the Soviet Union in history’s dustbin for a quarter-century and the threat of communist expansion long vanquished, it serves no one – not the United States and certainly not Cuba – to continue this embargo.

The likelihood that it will one day be lifted grew in December 2014 when President Obama announced that diplomatic relations between the two nations would be restored. Embassies have since been opened, and some trade and travel restrictions have been lifted. The state visit by Obama to Cuba this week is another important step in this improved relationship.

Before he started his journey, Obama said he believed his successor would oversee the end of the embargo, and there’s reason to believe that he’s right. According to a CBS News/New York Times poll released Monday, 58 percent of Americans said they welcomed the renewed relationship, and 55 percent said they wanted to bring the curtain down on the embargo.

There is bipartisan support for ending it, though it is unlikely to go anywhere this year thanks to election-year politics. Tom Emmer, a Republican congressman from Minnesota, has introduced legislation that would repeal the embargo, and has the public support of 10 other members of the GOP. He told The Washington Post that other Republicans also support lifting the embargo.

“The real issue is that you’re in an election year, so all the air gets sucked out of the room,” Emmer told the Post.

If the embargo is lifted, more Americans might have experiences like the one Rita Polansky had. The dean of students at St. Patrick School in Canonsburg, she ventured to Cuba last fall in order to see Pope Francis, assuming that her odds would be better seeing him there than at any of the limited number of stops the pontiff was making in the United States. Polansky brought health and school supplies with her, and, as we reported in the Observer-Reporter Monday, she found Cubans eager to extend a warm welcome.

“Cubans didn’t seem to be afraid to talk to us, even though the government owns everything there,” she told the Observer-Reporter’s Karen Mansfield. “The people didn’t seem reluctant or afraid to talk to us in private … I took the American flag with me, and a lot of kids took a picture with me and the American flag. The people are just warm and friendly, and they were happy to see Americans there.”

The dwindling number of supporters of the embargo have argued that only by keeping the pressure on Cuba will its leaders reform its economy and improve the lot of its citizens. But, more likely, the pressure will come from below, as more Cubans get a chance to see what the outside world is like, and encounter people like Polansky, who visit the island with a sense of curiosity and goodwill.

More Americans should follow her.