A 50-year duel

The 1980 Mariel Boatlift saw U.S. watercraft packed with more than 100,000 Cubans fleeing the island. The rafter crisis of 1994 saw tens of thousands more braving the 90-mile voyage across the Florida Straits on inner tubes, Styrofoam vessels and cars converted into floating barges.

Starting Monday, a new kind of migration commences as the communist government eliminates a long-standing restriction on Cubans' ability to leave the country, with its population of more than 11 million. And this time, instead of pushing out to sea and riding the Gulf Stream, the route to the U.S. could take Cubans on a meandering tour of foreign airports, visa offices and difficult land crossings.

Yoani Sanchez, a popular blogger in Havana, said most Cubans have been eagerly awaiting this day since the government announced the change in October. She said people on the island are positioned like runners crouched into the starting blocks on a track.

The change could significantly alter the complicated relationship between the governments of the United States and Cuba, a half-century-old feud that nearly ignited a nuclear war and has even outlived the Cold War that spawned the standoff.

Americans have long called on Cuba to grant more freedoms to its people, so the new rules could prompt Washington to rethink its 50-year-old embargo on the island and restrictions on most Americans from traveling there. If the new rules lead to another mass migration, President Obama and Congress may need to alter the policy granting most Cubans legal status once they touch U.S. soil.

Cuba experts want to see whether all Cubans will truly be free to travel before having those discussions, because they fear that the changes could just be a ploy by Cuban President Raúl Castro to win more concessions from an Obama administration that has already eased restrictions for Americans traveling to Cuba.

"They're not doing this because the Castro brothers became nice guys all of a sudden," Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart, R-Fla., whose family fled Cuba, said of Raúl Castro and his brother, Fidel Castro, who ran the country for five decades before falling ill and stepping down in 2008.

In the October announcement — where they revealed that Cubans no longer need to obtain an elusive exit visa to make any trip off the island — officials made clear that the government could still deny travel to Cubans for reasons of defense, national security and "other reasons of public interest." The new rules specifically forbid people involved in "economic development," scientists and people facing criminal charges to leave. Cubans must also have a valid Cuban passport, so applying for and renewing one could prove another obstacle.

During a meeting two weeks ago with Health Minister Roberto Morales, the nation's health care professionals were told that they would benefit from the new travel rules, according to the Associated Press. But most Cubans won't know until they try to leave.

"Whenever they make a decision like this, you never know what's behind it, what the motivations are," said Mario Soler, 46, a Cuban now living in South Florida with nearly 1 million other Cuban Americans. "They're the only ones who know how this is going to work."

If Cubans are allowed to leave in droves, and many find their way to U.S. soil, it will provide a dramatic test of America's policy toward Cuban immigrants and pave the way for the first significant shift in U.S.-Cuban relations in nearly a half-century.

Under the so-called "wet-foot, dry-foot" policy unique to citizens of Cuba, any Cuban caught at sea is returned to the island, while those who touch U.S. soil are generally granted legal residence. From 2000 to 2010, more than 30,000 Cubans a year became legal U.S. residents.

Meanwhile, the U.S. government severely restricts travel to Cuba. Only Americans with relatives on the island and those going on educational, religious or artistic licenses can legally travel there.

"It's a political move on the part of Raúl Castro to put pressure on the United States," said Jaime Suchlicki, director of the University of Miami's Institute for Cuban and Cuban-American Studies. "Now Raúl can get up and say, 'I'm allowing my people to travel, why don't you let Americans travel to Cuba?' That's what it's going to be — a pressure point."

The influential Cuban-American community in Florida, a key voting bloc in the massive swing state, has long pressured Washington to maintain an economic embargo on the island. But Obama has done well in his two elections among Cuban Americans, signaling that younger Cubans may be more open to easing travel rules.

The changes in travel restrictions could also be viewed as the latest in a series of steps that Raúl Castro has undertaken to remove what he called "excessive prohibitions" on Cubans and a state-controlled economic system that has long been languishing.

Since he assumed power, Castro has allowed Cubans more access to cellphones and computers, let them stay in tourist hotels previously off-limits to them, granted more licenses to open private businesses and, for the first time in the history of the revolution, let Cubans buy and sell their cars, apartments and houses.

Philip Peters, vice president of the Arlington-based Lexington Institute, said Castro understands that many Cubans will permanently flee the island when given permission to travel. But he said that Cuban officials also see the economic benefit of letting people travel more freely, where they can make more money and, hopefully, send it home.

"I think they decided to take the leap, and they're making a bet that they're going to be stronger for this," Peters said. "Cubans who have been involved in the deliberations — economists who have studied migration — they talk about circularity. If they allow Cubans to travel freely, they're going to be better off."

Christopher Sabatini, senior policy director at the Americas Society/Council of the Americas, agrees that the Cubans see this as a money-making venture. But he said there are other motivations involved.

"There is a palpable concern among some government officials about this process of reform getting a little out of control, that it's slipping out of their hands," Sabatini said.

Allowing some Cubans to travel more freely, he said, provides a "distraction" from the still-languishing economy and a "safety valve" to release some of the steam building up in the dissident community.