Following the COPA debacle last month concerning eight Venezuelans, the Cabinet had given its approval for the Ministry of Immigration to impose a VISA requirement for nationals of Venezuela, Ecuador and Dominican Republic. And that regulation may put a damper on tourists from those countries who may have been thinking about visiting Belize. But the Minister of Tourism disagreed, saying that the protection of potential victims of human smuggling is more important.
Hon. Anthony Mahler, Minister of Tourism
"The traffic from South America is very low for us, that is another part of our strategy that we want to go after but we have to protect ourselves. Human trafficking is a serious situation for us and for a lot of countries around the world and we know that a lot of these people aren't coming for tourism purposes, they come and they disappear in the system but we don't know where they go from there. Well, we kinda suspect but we don't know."
