In the first real tests of Cuba’s new migration laws, blogger Yoani Sánchez got a passport Wednesday after 10 years of being denied permission to travel abroad, but a former political prisoner was rejected because he did not serve all of his 20-year sentence.

“Incredible!! They called me at home to tell me that my passport was ready. They have just handed it to me,” Sanchez said in a Twitter message. The government critic had been denied many permits to travel abroad since around 2003.

“I am happy and sad,” she said in another message after sending a photo of her brand new blue passport. “On the one hand I have my document for travelling, but several of my friends like @angelmoya will not be permited.”

Angel Moya, who spent eight years in prison and is married to Berta Soler, leader of the dissident Ladies in White, said a passport office worker told him she could not accept his application because he “is regulated for the public interest.”

Many dissidents who had been blocked from traveling abroad by the State Security apparatus saw their hopes to go rise after Cuba adopted reforms on Jan.14 that lifted the requirement for the widely hated exit permits known as “white cards.”

Under the new system, Cubans are supposed to be able to make personal trips abroad with just valid passports and visas from other countries. But the laws specifically note that passports can be denied for “national security” or “national interests.”

Sanchez and Guillermo Fariñas, winner of the European Parliament’s Sakharov Prize for human rights in 2010, Yoani Sanchez had been told after Jan. 14 that they would indeed be able to obtain new passports and travel abroad.

State Security repeatedly denied her permission to leave the island to pick up the many international prizes she has won for her blog, Generación Y, and take part in seminars — even though she had so many visas on her old passport that she had to ask for a new one.

Moya, 49, was sentenced to 20 years in prison during a 2003 crackdown on 75 dissidents known as Cuba’s Black Spring, and many of the others were sentenced to 28 years in one-day trials. Several were freed early over the years on “extra-penal licenses” usually related to ill health.

The last 52 were freed in 2010 and 2011 — also under licenses — as part of an agreement between Cuban ruler Raúl Castro and Cuban Cardinal Jaime Ortega. Virtually all went directly from prison to exile in Spain but 12, including Moya, chose to stay on the island and continue their opposition work.

Moya said he went to the passport office closest to his Havana home Wednesday morning and asked about applying for a passport “because I want to travel like any citizen in any country, maybe to Spain, maybe to the United States.”

The woman at the counter took his national ID card number, looked at a computer and said he could not have a passport “because I was regulated for public interest,” he told El Nuevo Herald by telephone from Havana.

The word “regulated” appears to be government-speak for a control. The reason for the block, he was told, was that “my sentence had not been fulfilled.”

He explained to the woman that he had been freed as part of the deal between the government and the church, Moya noted, but she just pointed to the computer and indicated there was no information on how he could appeal that decision.