Cuban-Americans Head to Cuba for Pope's Visit Natalia Martinez speaks with a clinical distance when discussing her family's decision to leave Cuba two decades ago. But the graduate student's cool demeanor falls away when she speaks of returning to her homeland for the first time this week during Pope Benedict XVI's historic visit. I am excited. I am nervous, and I'm anticipating confusion," Martinez, 25, said with an anxious laugh. She could be speaking for many of the more than 300 Cuban-Americans who will form a delegation to Cuba led by Miami's Roman Catholic Archbishop Thomas Wenski. Some of those making the pilgrimage Monday fled the island half a century ago. Some grew up with only the stories their exile parents told them of the island 90 miles (145 kilometers) across the Florida Straits. What unites these pilgrims is the attachment they feel to the country their families left years ago, even those who have long opposed Fidel and Raul Castro and the communist government they ushered in 53 years ago. Travel to Cuba is always controversial among Cuban-Americans and the half-century-old U.S. embargo of the island severely limits travel there. In the 1970s, those who visited were often blacklisted in South Florida and a few faced violence upon return. These days, newer Cuban immigrants often visit relatives on the island. But the issue is still a requisite topic for politicians campaigning in Florida. That controversy has only been magnified in the run up to the pope's visit. At least half a dozen older exiles who are returning for the first time to the island declined to be interviewed by The Associated Press because of concerns about the reaction their words might cause in Miami or in Havana. Many exiles who fled during the early days of the revolution see little reason to return. Cubans are the only group of immigrants who are almost always granted what amounts to political asylum when they reach U.S. soil. Older exiles say travel to the island cheapens legitimate claims for asylum, and they complain that delegations such as Wenski's prop up the Cuban government, which has a stake in all the country's hotels and tourism services. Those traveling to Cuba argue more interaction can only help open up the island. Businessman Carlos Saladrigas, 61, is among this group. But it took him years to reach that conclusion. Saladrigas came to Miami at the age of 12 on the so-called Pedro Pan flights the Church organized in the early 1960s to bring Cuban children to the U.S. His parents reunited with him a year later. An outspoken critic of the Castro government, Saladrigas helped lead a successful effort to stop a similar archdiocese pilgrimage from going to Cuba during Pope John Paul II's 1998 trip there. That visit was the first by a pope since the Cuban Revolution. Saladrigas says that experience was a turning point. "I saw for the Cuban people how it became a great image for change and hope," he said. And it quickly dawned on me that an isolated Cuba is the most counterproductive thing we can do. Saladrigas is now co-chairman of the business-led Cuba Study Group. The nonprofit advocates for political and economic change on the island but also encourages more exchanges. He returned for the first time last year as part of his work with the Catholic charitable order known as the Knights of Malta. But I think this will feel different. I think this is going to be a historic moment," he said.