New Hints at Looser Travel Rules Stir Hope in Cuba To leave the island, Cubans face bewildering and expensive permits. HAVANA - From her small, tidy apartment here, Niurka dreams of visiting Miami one day to see her son's home and the school where he is studying medicine. She also yearns to bid farewell to her late father at his graveside and to meet her brother's children while they are still young. "Economic necessity has separated our family," she said. I want to put it back together. But making the 30-minute hop to Florida will not be easy for Niurka, a 45-year-old doctor, whose brother left Cuba a decade ago, followed by her father and then, five years ago, her 24-year-old son. Like all Cubans, she needs permission to leave, but as a member of the country's medical corps, she may be forced to wait years for an exit permit - if she gets one at all. So Niurka, who asked that her full name be withheld lest she spoil her chance of traveling, anxiously awaits a promised reform of Cuba's migration rules that, for half a century, have controlled who can leave the island, who can return and how long they can be gone. Any loosening of controls would be a step toward eliminating one of the most deeply resented restrictions on Cubans" liberty and a milestone on President Raúl Castro's gradual march toward economic and social reform. Cuban officials have hinted for years that a change might be coming, but the bureaucratic system limiting travel remains in place. If it does become easier for Cubans to legally leave the island, the reform could spur economic migration and deepen ties between the island and the two million members of the diaspora, whose money and business experience may be vital to the government's plans to drastically enlarge the private sector. "If you have a significant change to the migratory law, it will be a watershed," said Arturo López-Levy, a Cuban-born academic who left the island 10 years ago and lectures at the University of Denver. "It could unleash the potential of the whole reform program and it could empower the actors who favor reconciliation between the Cubans on the island and the diaspora," he said. This is a critical juncture. Hundreds of thousands of Cubans have gone into exile or migrated over the past five decades, and thousands are believed to have died trying to cross the Straits of Florida in small boats - partly because American policy promises residency to Cubans who make it ashore. Though many Cubans now pay smugglers to take them to the United States via Mexico, the United States Coast Guard continues to find would-be migrants at sea. There was a swell of hope for new travel rules last August, when Mr. Castro told Parliament that the government was working on "updating" the law. Then in an interview published this spring, Ricardo Alarcón, president of Parliament, said the government was planning a "radical and profound" reform in the coming months. Deputy Foreign Minister Dagoberto Rodríguez said during a video conference with Cubans overseas in April that progress on the issue was "advanced." In lines at the migration office, on blogs and in conversations among islanders and members of the diaspora, Cubans question whether the government will part with such a lucrative bureaucracy or risk letting go health workers whose overseas missions earn Cuba billions of dollars each year. "It's one thing for a foreign country not to let you in and another for your own country not to let you out," said Amparo García, a jewelry seller whose daughter, 23, is in the process of getting a permit to visit her father in Angola. If you have the money and you want to travel, you should be able to buy a ticket and go to the airport. That simple. Jorge Martínez, who charges $1 to type up migration papers in the front seat of his 1969 Volkswagen Beetle, said more people than usual were applying for passports because they believe the government will scrap the exit permit and increase passport fees to make up for lost revenue. "People have been talking about this for years, but right now there's a lot of expectation," he said.