The Senate Select Committee also asked him to explain that Cabinet directive to the former Acting Immigration Director, Maria Marin.
Hulse wrote a letter to Marin in 2014 informing her of a policy decision which basically says that if Immigration officers can't find the file of source documents for passport - holders, the department must not delay in processing in their renewal.
There is a specific qualification that these applicants must meet. The letter says, quote, "Cabinet has decided that persons who hold original nationality certificates and previous passports should be issued with a new passport."
The Auditor General flagged this as a worrying policy, given all the fraudulently issued passports and nationalities that her audit uncovered.
Here's what Hulse had to say about Cabinet's rationale behind this decision:
Godwin Hulse- Minister of Immigration
"This was discussed at length because there were many requests for persons to renew their passport but when they got to the Immigration Department, Immigration Department could not find a file. Some of these people had been here 25 years, 30 years. I will give you a clear example, now deceased, a woman by the name of Lila Vernon who was known popularly as Belize creole gial could not renew her passport even though she had many passports because they could not find her file. Apparently, she came to Belize as a very young person or baby from Honduras, where many Belizeans were born, where many people were born and she had several passports, traveled around the world. Cabinet felt that persons like those should not be disenfranchised because the department could not find a file for them and that's why it said previous passports and original nationality certificate. That is why the instructions were given. And it said however obtained, it didn't mean obtained fraudulently, and I did hear you honorable minister make that point on Krem radio somewhere around January 14th, but anyway. However obtained simply meant whether it was machine-readable or handwritten because in the past passports were handwritten, not all were machine-readable before 2005, I think it was. What happened there is the attorney general at the time suggested, and I won't get into the legal rang-tangle, as you know I will demit to Senator Courtney on that one, but it did say that if you refuse to give me my passport and there is no logical justification I could go and bring and order mandamus to get it done. There was also a suggestion that I could sue."
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