Beyonce, Jay-Z Cuba Trip Totally Legal In Spite Of Florida Republicans Anger, Marco Rubio Bashing: Jigga And Bey Traveled To Cuba On Cultural License
Florida Republicans (more specifically Marco Rubio, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and Mario Diaz-Balart) can all calm themselves down. According to an inside source at the US Treasury department that spoke to Reuters, Jay-Z and Beyonce's 5th anniversary trip to Havana was totally legal. The celebrity couple of Jigga and Bey traveled under a creative license, which is a perfectly acceptable way for an American citizen to enter Cuba.
The United States forbids its citizens from traveling Cuba as part of a trade embargo with the island nation that has stood for more than half a century. (Well, technically speaking, US citizens can go to Cuba. They just can't spend any money there.) However, citizens can file for a license that allows them to visit Cuba through the Treasury. It appears that Beyonce and Jay-Z did receive creative licenses that allowed them to visit Cuba for their 5th anniversary.
The fuss over the superstar couple's highly publicized excursion came to a head recently, when US House Republicans Ros-Lehtinen and Diaz-Balart penned a letter to the US Treasury, demanding to know whether Jay-Z and Beyonce entered the country legally.
Despite the clear prohibition against tourism in Cuba, numerous press reports described the couple's trip as tourism and the Castro regime touted it as such in its propaganda," the letter said. "US dollars spent on Cuban tourism directly fund the machinery of oppression that brutally represses the Cuban people."
Rap fan, Cuban-American and potential future Republican presidential candidate Marco Rubio weighed in on Twitter.
"If interested in what life really like in Cuba, [Jay-Z] should have visited persecuted rapper Ángel Yunier Remón [Arzuaga] #99problems&dictatorsareone," Rubio wrote.
Beyonce and Jay-Z have offered no comment on the status of their Cuban excursion.
What do you think? Should Republican lawmakers let Jay-Z and Beyonce be? Did Jigga and Bey actually obtain the proper licenses to travel to Cuba?
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