Vetting Committee Set Up to Review Visa Regulations

Godwin Hulse

Minister of Immigration Godwin Hulse told News Five last week that he recently brought to Belize the passport issued illegally to Korean national Won Hong Kim back in September 2013. In January of this year, following the immigration scandal involving his former cabinet colleague, Elvin Penner, legislation was passed to cover loopholes in the immigration system. One such measure is a visa vetting committee which has since been set up and according to Hulse, members are currently in the process of reviewing the entire visa regulation. Hulse focused today on the proposed changes to the regulations for student and visitor’s visas.

Godwin Hulse, Minister of Immigration

“We are in the process of reviewing the entire visa regulations. There are about sixty of them over the years. We are trying to amalgamate them….not trying, we are amalgamating them into one so that there is one document with all the respective countries that have waivers, etc., etc.  The committee is up and running and we are also going to be establishing specific visas because you have to understand that this country’s visa laws date back to ‘63. So when we got independence, they still obtained. We are going to now create the student visa, employment visa or what you call work permit visa, we have a visitor visa and all this so we clear this up. Cause what is happening is that a lot of people get visitor visas, but they come to Belize with the intention to work and then they stay and they get stamped up. We want to clean up all of that and we are working in that direction.”