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But the department is now trying to put that episode behind them, and proceed in an orderly fashion with their regular duties. But Daniel Ortiz found that ghosts of Penner were still around:...

Daniel Ortiz reporting
103 new Belizeans were sworn in by the Immigration Department this afternoon. It's the first swearing in since April of last year - a year in which the Elvin Penner Immigration Scandal emerged.

Hon. Godwin Hulse - Minister of Immigration
"As you know when we pass the law which came into effect on January 6th this year, the new immigration law - we had to build in a clause people who had been in the process before, so many of the people who were sworn in today were people who had their certificates signed by previous ministers but they were never sworn in. So we had to do that and also basically today was dealing with a lot of the back log of people whose files had been there for a long time and they were saying when will we swear. It's a tremendous effort on behalf of the department to get this all organize so that these people can be sworn in. Some of these people have been in Belize 10-15 years already and being on permanent residence rather than getting their nationality, so that was the process today. What we intend to do is accelerate this process so to clean out all t6he back log. When we've clean out all the back log then it should be a smooth going thing after that - every quarter we will be swearing new Belizeans and that sort of thing."

Every quarter after that backlog is dealt with, but the Department suspended 2 swearing in ceremonies during the height of the upheaval from the immigration scandal.

Minister Hulse reviewed all the pending immigration certificates signed by Former Minister Penner as part of a process to ensure that all today's new citizens met all the requirements:

Hon. Godwin Hulse - Minister of Immigration
"You will recall that during the turmoil surrounding Minister Penner, the media had ask lots of questions if we had looked into previous certificates that he had signed and that sort of thing and that's just what we did. I mean it's not everything he signed was wrong and even if any was wrong that's to be determine by the courts but we went through meticulously all the files and etcetera and we simply redid the certificates and I signed all the new ones."

Daniel Ortiz
"How regular is it that you guys do the swearing in for new Belizeans?"

Hon. Godwin Hulse - Minister of Immigration
"We do 4 a year. It's generally quarterly; April, June, September and December. As you know last year we didn't do our September and December obvious reasons, so this is the first in April. We will probably do one in between because we had a bunch of other certificates that we were not able to hand out today, so we would probably do an intermediate one in May and then we get into the June and the regular process."

Daniel Ortiz
"You've made mention that there is going to be a new part of this process where names will be published. Tell us about that and why?"

Hon. Godwin Hulse - Minister of Immigration
"Yes, because the new law requires that. These people would not have fall into that yet but we are going to implement it anyway. The reason for that is that as I've said in my speech, there is no secret. People should know who the Belizeans are and when you publish you name and address, people can come and say well I don't know anybody who lives here and so and then we know there is a problem. So we get over all this issue of some secret Belizean being given nationality and all of that - that's what we are trying to do - make it open and transparent."

There were 2 former US citizens on that waiting list to be formally recognized as Belizeans. They told us that it was well worth the wait.

Diane Tabony - New Belizean
"I've been waiting since 2011, but I've been here 30 years so I think since 2011 - that's fine. I've waited a long time anyway. But you know it shouldn't be easy."

Janet Brown - New Belizean
"I started in January 2012 and everything was complete in 2013 and then like you said the debacle held it up and so when I receive the call yesterday to come I was like okay clear the schedule i'm there."

Daniel Ortiz
"Tell us about finally being able to apply for a Belizean passport?"

Diane Tabony - New Belizean
"That's a very proud moment. It's a gorgeous country, the people are amazing. It is a great honor."

As noted in the story, the names of 103 new Belizeans will be Gazetted as part of the New Immigration Act to bring transparency to the process.