So what are the push and pull factors for migration? Locke explained why a lot of persons living in Belize wanted to return to their own countries.
Diana Locke, Head of Office, IOM Belize
"I think in the past, before Covid, it was people looking for economic opportunities. And so Covid came along and we saw where that changed a lot. With our assisted voluntary return program, we took about 400 persons to Central America in the period of 2020 to 2024. There were varying range of persons, the first year were persons who probably had come for economic reasons. It wasn't working out after Covid and they wanted to leave. We saw the second year. We saw a lot of retired persons who were collecting their Belize Social Security, who decided, I'm getting to that age. I want to go back to my country. So we saw a spike in that. We also saw, increase in the persons who are in the asylum process in Belize deciding, I don't want to do this anymore. But we want to go back. It was interesting when we encountered those persons because when we first met them, they just basically said they came to Belize because they were looking for a better life. We only found out that they were asylum seekers at the very end, when they were about to be taken out, because you have to get permission. We had an arrangement with the government where once IOM facilitated your departure, you would not pay the fines. And so in order to provide this information to government to get the clearance for that person to leave, this was when we would find out that they had that little sticker for an asylum in their passport. And so then that's how we were able to check and realize that people who were in that process decided, I'm not going to continue. But in the course of discussion with them, you found out that that was the cheapest way of staying in Belize, you didn't pay anything to stay in Belize any other way carries a $200 fee so to keep yourself legal. And so they were using that process, but we don't see that anymore. The AVR has closed, I do believe that the numbers of persons seeking asylum has dropped significantly from what we've seen and the discussions that we've had with the government. And so, well, there are still people trickling in. I'm not saying that it's not there are no people, but it's nowhere near the numbers that we had before."
