Going back now to the summit of the Americas - one of the main initiatives to come out of it is a Migration Declaration agreed to by 20 countries including Belize.
This ties in to the Belize Amnesty program - and the foreign minister explained that he is asking the US to focus on more than just Honduras, Guatemala and Salvador which drive the most immigrant into the US:
Hon. Eamon Courtenay, Minister of Foreign Affairs
"The United States' focus is primarily on the northern triangle, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras which excludes Belize and we made a strong pitch to them that it needs to be one, entire region and secondly, at minimal the northern rectangle. We have been saying to them we need to include Belize. We had some very good discussions and some meetings have been planned for later in the year to try to convince them to broaden the scope of their assistance on immigration matters."
Courtenay is also minister of immigration and he told us more about the program:
Hon. Eamon Courtenay, Minister of Foreign Affairs
"If the estimates by the government and international organizations is anywhere near accurate between 40,000-60,000 people. If that amount of people apply, this would be a net income earner for government, based on the fees that have to be paid. So, it is quite likely that we will end up without any loss to government in terms of expenditure."
And he also made an important clarification:
Hon. Eamon Courtenay, Minister of Foreign Affairs
"We are not granting citizenship and secondly, people will not be allowed to vote in elections until and if they become Belizeans. I think many people were wondering whether this was some form of gimmick to try to get people under electoral roll and that can't happen for a minimum of 5 years."
