Ministry of Immigration Set to Launch Migration Policy: Collaboration with Various Ministries

The Ministry of Immigration, in alignment with the PUP’s True Blue manifesto is preparing to launch its migration policy.  According to the Director of Border Management and Immigration Services, Debra Estrada-Baptist, the policy is being executed through the collaboration with several ministries and agencies.

Debra Baptist – Estrada, Director of the Immigration Department: “We are also working on our migration policy. Of course we do have stakeholders involved in that. We have the Ministry of Education, Human Development, and we also work along with the Anti-Trafficking in Persons Unit within the Police Department. We are looking at children who arrive at our borders unaccompanied along with the ATIPs department, I mean the Anti-Trafficking in Persons Committee. We also did migrant children a protocol for unaccompanied migrant children, how it is that these children are taken care of when they arrive at our borders unaccompanied. So we also work along with the Department of Human Services.”

According to the International Organization for Migration (IOM), “Belize has received the largest foreign population in relation to the total population, since 1983 and is also concurrently experiencing high emigration rates.”