Next month the Belize Diaspora summit will be taking place in Florida and reports say that the Consulate of Belize in Florida will not participate this year due to the ongoing immigration issues that are affecting Belizeans living in the US. We asked the Minister of Foreign Affairs about this and here's what he told us.
Francis Fonseca, Minister of Culture
"Yeah I am not aware of that at all. Certainly our instructions to them- if that's the case - our instructions to them will be that they need to participate so you know I wasn't aware of that. I had heard something mentioned yesterday but certainly that is not the position of the ministry, our embassies or consulates across the US. We are there to support the efforts of our diaspora. So we certainly expect them to be there and support that initiative as well as you know different departments of government including the immigration department will be there to provide services to our Belizeans who are living in that community."
"Well I think the immigration department has done it the last two years or certainly last year and what they do is process passports you know renewals, provide information and advice that type of thing, take applications some people are applying nationality different things so they are there to provide full services for those communities and in this case it's in Florida so they will be there to provide whatever services are required."
