Immigration Problems Through the Looking Glass – US and Belize

By David North on October 17, 2013

Here's the astoundingly modest claim of the Immigration Minister from the Central American nation of Belize:

And we do have some honest people in the Immigration Department.

This was his reply, as recorded by a local TV station to a question about reports of widespread corrupt issuance of illicit visas and nationality papers by members of his staff. He went on to say:

But the world is real and things are real and if ten thousand and fifteen thousand is put in front of some people, the temptation is strong.

So here we have a cabinet member, Godwin Hulse, ineffectively, trying to limit illegal immigration to his Third World country, but many members of his staff are not cooperating.

Meanwhile, here, in the First World, we have exactly the opposite situation: the field staff of the Department of Homeland Security, as represented by their unions, want to enforce the current immigration law and the political leadership is moving in the opposite direction.

For example, see these statements by Chris Crane, head of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement workers’ union, and Kenneth Palinkas, who holds a similar position with the US Citizenship and Immigration Services officers' union.

They want to enforce the law as it stands, and oppose efforts to change it via "comprehensive immigration reform".

As background for the situation in Belize, the former British Honduras, some aliens want immigration papers to stay in that nation, and others want the documents to help them get into the U.S. The nation shares a (porous) border with Mexico, and many people from other parts of the world use, or try to use, Belize as a stopover on their way into the States. Further, the price quoted by the Minister is presumably in Belizean dollars, which are worth half that of American ones.