Opposition alleges scandal over passports
While the Prime Minister could be credited with taking a principled stand on the issue of the constitution and capital punishment, he will find it more difficult to deal with charges levelled today by Mr. Barrow’s newspaper, “The Guardian”. Claiming to have irrefutable evidence of scandal in the Immigration Department, the newspaper laid out a broad conspiracy that ranged from several Justices of the Peace right up to the Minister of Home Affairs. The alleged racket is said to involve the granting of nationality and passports to foreigners who have not satisfied the legal requirements for citizenship and in some cases have never set foot in Belize. After learning of the allegations, the P.M. promised an investigation.
Prime Minister Said Musa
“Clearly this matter will have to be thoroughly investigated. We have abolished the sale of passports, the economic citizenship programme has come to an end as of December last year. Allegations have been made in the press and this matter will have to be thoroughly investigated. Because there might be some confusion going on as to whether people who still acquire nationality on five year residence, if it is found that through whatever collusion or whatever of any public officer that this procedure was not properly followed, in other words that the people did not really have five years residence, than clearly action will have to be taken.”
Stewart Krohn
“You mention public officer, how bout politicians?”
Prime Minister Said Musa
“Well of course. But I feel very confident in my mind that the minister certainly is not implicated in this. But, we will carry out a very transparent investigation of this matter to ensure that this is not just people playing politics.”
The temptation of the easy money involved in immigration rackets has been the Achilles heel of successive governments dating back at least to the time of Independence. The three factors driving the practice are, one, the seemingly insatiable demand of citizens from places like mainland China, India, Africa and the Middle East to leave their places of birth in search of a new home, preferably in the United States. Two, the insatiable greed of Belizean “immigration agents” who apparently find it impossible to earn an honest living and, three, the ability of high officials to shield their involvement by either blaming low level public officers or claiming to be so swamped by paper work that they do not know what they are signing. As for the latest accusations, News 5 has learned that passports may be only the tip of the iceberg; that there is an even busier trade in Belizean visas that has yet to be adequately explained.
