Ministry of Human Development Discusses Haitian Migration

Dolores Balderamos-Garcia

The controversial issue of Haitian nationals arriving in Belize before being smuggled or trafficked onward to the United States continues to raise serious concerns.  While the matter presents an awkward situation for CARICOM nationals, in the context of free movement across the region, the Immigration Department has had to implement specific measures to stem the issue.  Dolores Balderamos-Garcia, Minister of Human Development, has weighed in on the matter.

Dolores Balderamos-Garcia, Minister of Human Development

“We feel deeply for the extreme difficulty that the country of Haiti is in and our hearts go out to a country where the people really don’t even have a proper government and, as part of CARICOM, we do have that reaching out in terms of how we feel.  Now, it’s a complex issue in terms of the Haitians because we find that the Haitians, I mean many of them were coming on these flights and the airlines they don’t care.  If they are filling the flights, they want to make money.  But if Haitians are victims of trafficking because of the tens of thousands of dollars they are paying to be moved from one area to the next, if they are actual victims then I don’t think that we should participate in that because clearly the end goal for them is not to remain in Belize, it’s to go on to the mighty United States.  So where we are very cognizant and where our hearts go out to the difficulty of the Haitian people, I don’t believe that as a responsible government we should be going towards allowing Haitians to use Belize as a transit country to go up north because we see what the objective of the traffickers is and really the needs of the people in wanting that better life.”