Florida Republican Senator Marco Rubio, son of Cuban immigrants to South Florida, called out individuals and politicians who have visited the island nation in recent history.
"Cuba's not a zoo, where you pay an admission to go in and you get to watch people living in cages, to see how they're suffering. Cuba's not a field trip."
He likened visits to the communist state seeking firsthand accounts of the conditions there to simply padding the pockets of the Castro brothers who have ruled the island since 1959.
Rubio also criticized former Cubans who have visited the island, saying visiting the place they successfully escaped from defies the purpose of President Obama's "Cuban Refugee Adjustment Act" which allows for expatriated Cubans to gain permanent American residency one year after arriving in the United States. He made the remarks at a recent luncheon for the Cuba-Democracy Political Action Committee in Miami.
He also condemned legislative colleagues' visits with the Cuban government, saying that they always return to the US claiming to have discovered solutions to the multiple problems facing Cubans and Cuban-American diplomacy.
"That's what they say. [Washington's policies are] a relic of the Cold War -- but our policy is not the relic. The relic is the Cuban government."
Senator Rubio has reportedly never been to the country outside of visiting the United States' military installation at Guantanamo Bay.
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