And says immigration bill is all glitter and no substance

Francis Fonseca

Minister of Immigration, Godwin Hulse, has proposed three new pieces of legislation which, if passed into law, will have the Immigration Department running like, in his words, a well-oiled machine. But today, Fonseca dismissed them as all glitter and no substance, calling them band-aid measures to give the impression that much is being done, when that is far from the truth.

Francis Fonseca, PUP Leader

“We will have to go back to the house the national assembly at the net sitting to debate those bills. We are preparing of that debate, but I won’t say that, I associate myself fully with the remarks, the comments written by senior counsel Eamon Courtenay, the President of the Bar Association of Belize. I think he is exactly right and these band aid efforts are very, very premature. And that has been the position of the party at the house committee meeting that has taken place so far. We have said yes listen we are prepared to work with the government to fix any loop holes that exist to try to avoid any future problems with the passport, immigration, nationality department. But let us do that at the end of the process. That is why it brings me back to the importance of having an independent inquiry and investigation into what took place. Let us find out exactly what took place, what lop holes were exploited, what are the weaknesses in the system and then we can look at the laws and figure out how we can fix them. That is the way to go. Not trying to appease the Belizean people and trying to give the impression that you are fixing the problem and that you are responding to the problem when you are really not.”

The new Immigration bills will go before the House of Representatives for a second and third reading at the next sitting.