Pressing questions continue to revolve around immigration scandals

The interest and outcry in the immigration scandals of passports and visas have been constant. And that’s why Minister of Immigration Godwin Hulse remains a person of interest whenever he and the media happen to be in the same room. Today was certainly no exception. The pressing questions continue to revolve around the internal investigations into the nationality and passport sections. The repercussions from those investigations have been interesting. We say that because the administrative investigation into the passport section was concluded in November, but long before that, three public officers were placed on suspension, and are still on suspension pending a hearing before the Services Commission on Tuesday. In the Nationality Section, though, it was different. The administrative investigation was concluded on October fourth, but the officers fingered for glaring irregularities have only just been approached to answer pertinent questions. News Five asked Hulse about the obvious delay.

Godwin Hulse, Minister of Immigration

Godwin Hulse

“Well I don’t know that the report for nationality was concluded October the fourth. What I do know is that the ministry went in to corral all the files for passport issuance, all the files for nationality, all the files for PR, get them in order, chronologically; see what files would have been missing. You know there was a Mister Arthur Saldivar who claimed he had umpteen files. We had to make sure if that was so or not so, where those files were and that exercise was extensive. That exercise was only just completed. And before you move against people and then they would have come and said oh but the files are all over the place and you neva look; that had to be finished before a decision could be made on what we would do with these people. Passport is different you know. Remember passport is an application and you can look at that application and in five minutes decide whether the application was regular or irregular and that was the case with the three persons. The fact of the matter is and I will say this categorically, the first person on suspension was the person who accepted the application. The rules are clear. If you come before me; if Miss Ali comes, if Mister Jules come, if Mister Rudon, I am supposed to look at you and see to it that it is you who is applying. He couldn’t do that, he obviously couldn’t do that because the man applying—whether it was some Chiney man as they say said it—it was not Won Hong Kim. The person who does the data capture is to ensure who is sitting in front of the camera and whose picture he takes is the persons and clearly that is not the person because the man was not here. So that is easy to determine. And the supervisor in this case, Miss Sharon Flowers Neal, was to ensure that all the docs line up before she approves. And clearly the docs didn’t line up. So those are the questions that are going to be answered to the commission. How is it that you took the picture of a man who wasn’t sitting before you, but his picture showed up there? How is it you took application from somebody who wasn’t in front of you but you certified that this was the person? And how was it that you certified that all was in order when it wasn’t in order? That was easy to do. In the case of nationality, it is a lot different.”