Belize Diaspora Summit Faces Low Interest From Florida Belizeans

Minister of Foreign Affairs, Francis Fonseca, has assured Belizeans residing in Florida that the Belize Consulate will be participating in the upcoming Belize Diaspora Summit 2025 in July.  That assurance, however, may be short-lived, as Love News understands that the response from Belizeans in Florida are very minimal.  The idea of the summit is aimed at gathering Belizeans to discuss issues affecting them and gain access to various government services. However, Love News understands that personnel from the consulate had indicated that they would not participate due to growing concerns over the ongoing immigration raids by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Fonseca said that he was unaware of any such indication, but that the government’s official position is that the consulate will be present. 

Francis Fonseca, Minister of Foreign Affairs, Foreign Trade, Culture & Immigration: “Certainly our instructions to them will be that they need to participate. I wasn’t aware of that. I had heard something mentioned yesterday. Certainly that’s not the position of the ministry. Our embassies, our consulates across the US are there to support the efforts of our diaspora so we certainly expect them to be there to support that initiative as well as you know different departments of government including the immigration department will be there to provide services to our Belizeans who are living in that community. Well I think the immigration department has done it I think the last two years or certainly last year and what they do of course is process passports, renewals, provide information, advice, take applications. Some people are applying for nationality, different things so they’re there to provide full services for those communities in this case it’s in Florida so they’ll be there to provide whatever services are required from that community.”

The summit is being held at the Broward County Convention Center in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, from July 10 through to the 12th./