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Hon. Hulse Can’t Comprehend Visa Hustle
posted (November 8, 2013)
Last night on the news, you heard Immigration Minister Godwin Hulse speak in his role as a Senator - about the Wednesday's controversial vote in the Upper House. Tonight you'll hear him talk about Immigration matters. Those remain at the forefront of the public discourse - and tonight we'll start our questions at the most basic, to address something that has been overlooked from the entire controversy erupted. How does a Chinese person qualify for a Belizean VISA - and how does hustling enter the picture. Hulse outlined the official process for us:

Hon. Godwin Hulse, Minister of Immigration
"Our position and policy at the ministry is that every single person coming from the People's Republic of China, not Taiwan need a visa. There are two ways you get a visa; you apply at one of our embassies and we have none in China, so you have to go through a complicated route or you apply here."

"To get the visa, you have to send your passport. There is no other way to get it because the visa has to the stuck in the passport, so the passport has to come. Now how you get it here? This same way how we want for example to get a Mexican visa, you can send it with a friend, by courier or however you get in there and somebody has to bring it back, so I never concern myself with how the passports gets here because it have to get here."

"Once they come to the department there is an application form, it's very simple, the person to check whether the person is on any criminal watch list, if he is not on a criminal watch list he needs to pay $2,000 for the visa. He pays his $2,000 and a receipt is given, he needs to have a return ticket and he needs to be able to support himself. I think its $100 per day we set, so if he is going to be here for 3 days then he has to pay $3,000. That's all the criteria and the visa is issued."

"I don't understand why would anybody get involve in paying $10,000-$15,000-$20,000 for that process which you can apply and all goes to the director and the director has vetted all in that very manner and that is why I had no problem in saying maybe minister x,y and z has recommended or has called to try to hurry up the visas, but it goes through a process. What would have been wrong and I have not uncovered this; if there was anybody in there issuing visas without that process and without the $2,000 coming to the government. That would have been another problem and we have no evidence of that at this time, unless the auditor general uncovers."

As Hulse noted, there is a legitimate official process, and unless there was a secret, parallel visa issuing operation happening in the background, there wasn't that much room for hustling. But then, maybe there was such a parallel operation. Hulse concedes that this is one of the "unknown-unknowns" they are dealing with as they do an inventory of issued visas. We asked him about that attempt to reconcile all visas issued:

Jules Vasquez
"You have flatly denied that there was any visa quota, fine, accepted and then the next day the Prime Minister he didn't say there is a visa quota but acceded in his very famous remarks that there was a major problem with visa hustling and that ministers were he did not say directly involved, but certainly the conclusion one draws is that he has warn his ministers repeatedly to stay out of this business famously "for God sakes stop it" so there had to be something to stop. So, if he was so ware of it you had to be aware of it as well."

Hon. Godwin Hulse, Minister of Immigration
"What the Prime Minster said and I want to quote him fairly accurately "if you hang out with alibaba you must be of the thieves" from a political point of view I think his reactions are that it looks bad because people would be saying things and they would say that they are hustling. From where I sit I have no knowledge of that. I've never recommended anybody for a visa, "omteen" people have come to say that they don't know why their visas were hanging up there and that they don't know why the director is holding it up etc., I said that she has to do her investigation. Particularly I could name several people and these are not Chinese people who have come to say that they have so and so coming from India waiting and they can't get so and so.. and some from Nigeria and I said that there is a process and the director has to satisfy herself before she issue that visa that in fact the person coming is a legitimate person."

Jules Vasquez
"So then what would be the purpose of someone like Edmund Castro and the area representative writing a letter of recommendation if here has to be a process?"

Hon. Godwin Hulse, Minister of Immigration
"The only reason I have figured out so far and I have not seen these letters of recommendation saying give visa or don't give visa, what I know..."

Jules Vasquez
"They do exist though."

Hon. Godwin Hulse, Minister of Immigration
"Yeah they exist, what I know they've said is that we understand that so and so has applied, please expedite. There is nothing wrong is saying expedite, but there is that process. I am here to tell you until or unless the auditor general uncovers where that process has been sideline in which case the director and everybody else would go down, as far as I know every single visa that the director has issued has gone through that process, so I don't understand why people are paying big money out there. That is a mystery to me still."

Jules Vasquez
"However, you do know that visas have been stolen in the past. Have you all made a check to see that all the visas issued under that serialize system in fact correlate with checks made by the director?"

Hon. Godwin Hulse, Minister of Immigration
"The department is undertaking that and has done quite a bit of that, but back to the Chinese, I still don't understand why you pay $2,000 for a visa and you would pay any minister or any agent or anybody else $10,000 or $15,000 to get it. It makes ni sense to me at all."

Jules Vasquez
"Yet at times it happens."

Hon. Godwin Hulse, Minister of Immigration
"That's what we hear but I don't have the evidence because again if I had the evidence that any hustled. If I had that evidence that anybody was not qualify and was given a visa and had paid x amount, that would have been out here already."

Jules Vasquez
"Of course it may have been happening through the back door that there are illegitimate people hustling visas who cannot get the security clearance, so that why you would buy the service."

Hon. Godwin Hulse, Minister of Immigration
"Possible."

And what about other cases not of fraudulent visas, but of fraudulent passports? Hulse says he is prepared to cancel those.

Jules Vasquez
"I would imagine that there files and passport given out in the same manner as Citizen Kim."

Hon. Godwin Hulse, Minister of Immigration
"Those files are given to the police for their look and at the same time those persons who got those nationality - the passport will be revoked and the nationality will be null and void."

Jules Vasquez
"How many such files are there?"

Hon. Godwin Hulse, Minister of Immigration
"It's hard to say at this time because the director and the CEO and everybody are going through that and are accumulating that. It a little tedious process because what you have to do is first of all you have to find the file and then once you find the file you have to go back in the records to look at the passport data capture to see if they did get a passport. You have to look at the whole process of how they had permanent residence etc, and whether those were proper and I am here to tell you that there are many files where people come in with permanent residence cards that were transferred from the old police records. The old police records are nowhere to be found when they were transferred to immigration about 15-20 years ago. People come in with those cards to update them with a new permanent resident card. That fits the criteria; 'I am a permanent resident, I've been here for like 15 years.' Maybe they just got it yesterday for all you know."

"All of that takes time to research, those old card and whether in fact those were original cards and all of that that takes some process. I am here to tell you that I going to be the first minister to will revoke passports and rescind nationalities. In fact we stated already with the Guatemalans. Nobody did that before. That is looking out for the people of Belize. I have a lot of pride and dignity too, I don't want to reach Miami and nobody is looking at my passport with suspicion. That hurts me big time and so to protect that is my mission."

Hulse also very strongly condemned the leader of the opposition for suggesting that he was somehow involved in the selling of passports.

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