Yesterday, we brought you in-depth coverage of yesterday's Senate Hearings on Immigration. One of the witnesses who appeared before the Senate Select Committee was the retired immigration officer Therese Chavarria, who served 30 years at the Department.
Now, viewers will remember that since these hearings started, and indeed after the release of the Auditor General's report, public confidence this department is at an all-time low. You've heard the department being described as the "belly of the beast" which has "an entrenched culture of corruption and hustling".
The Audit report catalogues exploitation and abuse to the system where persons got visas, nationality certificates and passports that they should not have been given. In some instances, persons got their visas to visit Belize after they got nationality or permanent residency. In a matter of days, weeks or months, they were given passports that they didn't qualify for.
So, as part of their usual inquiry on how to fix the very broken immigration system, the Senate Committee sought to tap into to Chavarria's years of experience for suggestions to make it better. Once again, she was another witness to bring up political interference, and how it has affected the integrity of the department's work. Here's how she made the point to the Senators yesterday:
Therese Chavarria - Retired Immigration officer
"Definitely, we need to stop the political interference."
Hon. Mark Lizarraga - Senator, Business Sector
"When you say "stop political interference" can you say a little more about what you mean?"
Therese Chavarria - Retired Immigration officer
"For example, we see the most recent one with the passport where the minister was involved. We hear of other ministers coming in and requesting visas and we hear of ministers having passports and we hear of ministers being back and forth at the office and we see it sometimes. I don't know if officers believe that they have to or they must comply, but as far as I could recall, a minister is not the one who employs. A minister is not the one who hires and fires, so the officer needs to be reminded that you do your job, send the minister to the director if needs be."
Another recommendation that Chavarria made to the Senate Committee was that there needs to be tighter oversight and constant training of the staff. Here's how she explained why those would help, and how the Department became lax over the years:
Therese Chavarria - Retired Immigration officer
"Years ago we use to have monitoring whereby we would have the FO visiting districts all over ensuring that proper check and balance and monitoring is being done. I don't see that being done recently. So I think we need to have maybe it could be senior officers or maybe retired officers or somebody from the government service who could do monitoring - visiting different officers, we check the receipts, we check the visas - we do a check and balance, we check the passports if possible, we check permits and this needs to be constantly."
"From my observation it is not being done. So we need to implement proper monitoring. Another thing, training. I always stress training, training. I think the department would do good with a training unit. I could recall in the 90's myself and some officers use to come to the police academy for training. That is no longer done. We need to have a training unit where we can do training and include training such as honesty, force, court procedures, integrity and ethics, anti-corruption. These are some training that must be included."
At one point in her career, Chavarria was the head of the passport office in Belize City.
Email
Print