In recent weeks, Germany, Italy, France and Spain have issued warnings to their citizens: if you visit Cuba, you’ll have to obtain a visa to travel to the United States.

“Tourism is one of the biggest sources of revenue for Cuba, so the impact will be detrimental,” says Helen Yaffe, a Cuba specialist at the University of Glasgow. “I think it's clear that this is designed to put people off from traveling to Cuba as tourists. It’s another measure meant to strangle Cuba.

From Fast Track to Slow

Most European tourists currently in Cuba don’t seem to be aware of the ESTA ban.

“We didn’t know,” said Katie, an English tourist sightseeing in Old Havana last month. “I can’t really see why. It doesn’t seem fair.”

Citizens from ESTA countries who have traveled to Cuba since January 2021 could now face a roadblock trying to visit the U.S.

“I was not aware of this,” said Elena, a tourist visiting Cuba from Germany. “I'm thinking of going to a conference next year in New York and I am wondering if I may [encounter] troubles.”

ESTA, or Electronic Travel Authorization, is a fast-track online application that operates under the U.S. Visa Waiver program, and is available to citizens from 40 countries, most of them in Europe. Responses to an ESTA application are typically given in less than three days. In contrast, applying for a U.S. visa can take months and is eight times the cost.

A “Politicized Decision” with Economic Ramifications

Putting Cuba on the State Sponsors of Terrorism List was the last of a raft of Trump administration measures aimed at devastating Cuba’s economy. Being on the list means that banks and companies can be fined by the U.S. government if they do business with Cuba. As a result, Cuba has been further cut off from international investment and access to credit.

Now, Cuba’s tourism industry, its second largest source of foreign currency, could be directly affected. Tourism in Cuba was already reeling from the impact of COVID and travel restrictions imposed by Trump. These measures, along with a barrage of other sanctions, have contributed to an economic nosedive that has fueled an unprecedented wave of irregular migration from the island to the United States.

Biden has lifted some of the Trump-era travel restrictions, but he has stopped well short of returning to Barack Obama’s detente. Most of Trump’s hardline policies toward Cuba remain, including the State Sponsor of Terrorism designation.

“Nobody in the world believes that Cuba is a sponsor of terrorism and that includes [the Biden] administration,” says Yaffe. “It’s a completely politicized decision.”

The ESTA ban is not only impacting tourists. The law could also discourage foreign businesspeople from traveling to Cuba or investing there.

In addition, hundreds of thousands of Cubans who are dual citizens of Spain or other ESTA countries are also impacted by the measure. Over the last year, Cuban dual citizens have reported having had their access to ESTA removed upon arrival to the U.S. Without a way to move between the two countries easily, some have instead chosen to stay permanently in the U.S., adding to the nearly 200,000 Cubans who have migrated there by land via Mexico in the last year alone.

The listing of Cuba as a country that sponsors terrorism is not the only extraterritorial U.S. measure that punishes individuals and companies from third countries for engaging with the island. The 1992 Torricelli Act authorizes sanctions against countries that offer favorable loans or trade deals to Cuba, prevents foreign subsidiaries of U.S. companies from trading with the Caribbean nation and bans any ship that docks in Cuba from entering a U.S. port for six months.

Title III of the 1996 Helms-Burton Act has discouraged foreign investment by allowing U.S. nationals who claim their property was confiscated 62 years ago to file lawsuits in U.S. courts against U.S. and foreign companies doing business involving those properties in Cuba.

State Sponsor of…Peace?

While Cuba has been subject to terrorist attacks committed by individuals based in the United States, there is no evidence Cuba sponsors terrorism. 

One of the reasons given by the Trump administration to justify the designation stems from Cuba’s role as a mediator in peace talks between Colombia’s government and the National Liberation Army (ELN), considered to be a terrorist group by the U.S. government.

Cuba has hosted Colombian peace talks for years and received international praise for brokering a deal between the Colombian government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). More recently, Colombia met with the ELN in Havana and lauded Cuba’s role as a mediator.

“Colombia rejects the designation of Cuba as a sponsor of terrorism, which attempts to disregard its commitment to peace in Colombia and worldwide,” said Colombia Foreign Minister Alvaro Leyva in Havana last August.