213 new Belizeans were also sworn in late last month at the UB Gymnasium. When we spoke to Minister Hulse today he re-iterated that this exercise has absolutely nothing to do with the upcoming general elections - these citizens can't even vote because the final period of registration and transfer for this election closed on September 10th. Hulse says there's nothing suspicious:...
Godwin Hulse, Minister of Immigration and Nationality
"There could be nothing suspicious Jules. I've said time and time again, there were several thousand documents in Immigration that were languishing and fitting - all sorts of things happening and we undertook many months ago to clean up. We set up a special task force to go through all these files. We contact people and some of them has been waiting from the early 2002 and some from in the 1990s - many of them have children who are grown. Many of them have children here who have never been to the person country of origin etc. and it's just a process of trying to finalize all that exercise and the swearing in is open, its transparent. The press was there and the people got their certificates. It's just a continuing of the work we do and the certificates is signed. There is a still a lot of people who will be sworn in subsequently until that exercise is full completed."
And while there are now stringent vetting procedures for new citizens, many of these new citizens applied from so long ago - that these standards were not in place then.
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