Associated Press (via Yahoo) reports the increasing desire for legal trips to Cuba by all Americans.

HAVANA – Some Americans are eagerly awaiting the moment when they can make legal trips to Cuba despite the U.S. trade and travel embargo — and all it would take is a stroke of President Barack Obama’s pen.

While the U.S. Congress is weighing whether to lift the travel ban altogether, these Americans are hoping for a widening of already sanctioned visits and the chance to form a human wave introducing American values and culture to the communist society.

The people-to-people contact worked before, when President Bill Clinton made it easier for such trips beginning in 1999, they say.

“For us on the U.S. side, the Cubans became less of the boogyman. And the Cubans learned more about us and our culture,” said author Tom Miller, who in 2000 and 2001 co-organized bilingual workshops in Havana for Cuban and American writers.

Tens of thousands of Americans legally visited Cuba as recently as 2003, spending a week or two at a time delivering donated food and clothes from their churches, studying the architecture of Old Havana, visiting artists in their homes or even learning how to salsa dance.

Then President George W. Bush clamped down and the number of sanctioned trips plunged. In 2007, the latest year for which statistics are available, about 40,500 Americans visited Cuba, most of them presumably making illicit trips through third countries like Mexico.

But now that Obama has lifted all restrictions on travel by Americans with relatives on the island, the U.S.-based groups that once brought ordinary Americans on regular study tours hope he will let them resume those visits as well — even if the rest of the travel ban remains intact.