Traveling from the United States to Cuba: Everything You Need to Know

If you are Cuban but reside in the United States, to travel to Cuba you must have a valid passport (with active extensions) and possess a status document in that northern country, such as a residency permit, an American passport, or a travel permit.

Meanwhile, if you were not born on the island but wish to travel to Cuba, you must have a valid passport and visa to travel.

Main procedures and their fees:

-The Visa costs $80.

A visa is required for all persons not born in Cuba to enter the country as tourists (including children born in the United States).

-Extensions of Cuban passports: When it is only one, its cost is $230, if you need 2 the price is $390.

Cuban passports must be renewed every two years. The Embassy process takes at least 2 business days. To begin the process, you must contact the post office, where they will ask for a series of details, which you must send along with your passport to the Embassy.

-Renewing a Cuban passport costs $420.

Every six years, the Cuban passport expires. When this happens, you must renew your document. To do so, you must have two passport-sized photos, the expired passport, and complete a form provided by the post office. This renewal process takes at least two months, although it may take longer; please keep this in mind.

See also: Renewing a Cuban passport in the United States

-Getting a passport for the first time costs $420.

If your passport is lost or damaged, you have the option of obtaining it for the first time. To do so, you must present two passport-sized photos, your original birth certificate, and complete the form sent to the Embassy and completed at the post office.

Traveling from the United States to Cuba is increasingly difficult.

Travel to Cuba has become more difficult for Americans and people living under U.S. jurisdiction.

The Trump administration banned U.S. cruise ship operations to Cuba and eliminated people-to-people educational trips for Americans, disrupting the travel industry and destroying the plans of many American travelers to travel to Cuba.

U.S. cruise lines had been granted permission to begin sailing to Cuba in May 2016 by the Obama administration, at which point major companies like Carnival, Norwegian, and Royal Caribbean established routes that quickly became popular.

However, the cancellation of this permit just two months ago affected more than 800.000 reservations, according to the Cruise Lines International Association.

Similarly, the Donald Trump administration, for the first time in April of this year, decided to eliminate the category of "people-to-people" travel or educational activities.

The Obama administration allowed 12 categories of legal travel. And the "people-to-people" trips, which enabled direct contact with the Cuban people through cultural activities, were the most popular.

Many critics of the "people-to-people" policy considered this type of travel to be essentially tourism, and therefore argued that it remained illegal.

The overall result of Trump's measures is that no US citizen can come to Cuba as a tourist, and the legal options left for US citizens to enter the island are increasingly fewer.