Posted on 10/18/2010 1:32:37 PM PDT by La Lydia
If you think American entities sometimes have trouble enforcing the immigration law, you should hear about how some other countries handle the challenge. This week's prime example features the small Central American nation of Belize, with China, Cuba, and Haiti all playing supporting roles.
If other countries' migration-management agencies did their jobs carefully, it could be quite helpful to us, because a lot of the people violating the immigration law in Belize, for example, don't want to be in Belize at all, they want to be on their way to the U.S. There are always, as the Border Patrol puts it, OTMs being captured trying to enter the U.S. from south of the border, (OTM = other than Mexican)...
Three charter flights from Haiti arrived in Belize, one or more after the local airport was closed for the night; the flights were said to be carrying 32 or 33 Japanese tourists. For reasons I do not understand, the Belize Immigration Department then issued a press release saying that there were some procedural errors in connection with these flights from Dominican Republic, the planes' home base.
The TV press pounced. The flights were from Haiti, not the DR, they pointed out, a "coverup" they said. According to Channel Seven:
. . .the release makes nothing of the absolute oddness of 32 Japanese tourists flying in on a private charter jet from earthquake-ravaged Haiti to Belize. We note that the number of Japanese visitors to Belize every year is so fractional it is not even recorded under an individual heading in Tourism Board statistics -- so to have received 32 in a three-week span is anomalous . . .
. . .one of the so-called procedural irregularities is that no record was made of where the Japanese visitors got their visas...this is more than a glaring oversight...
The station wondered what happened to the "Japanese" tourists and noted: "And while all those are notable curiosities in what we can only conclude is a sanitized release -- for context we note that getting into Belize with a Japanese passport is infinitely simpler than doing it with a Chinese passport. First off, the cost of a single Belizean visa to a Chinese passport holder is twelve thousand dollars -- deterrence fees which are not levied on Japanese travelers..."
The next day it turned out that the TV newsmen were exactly right.
There were, in fact, 33 Chinese on the flights; they apparently were able to reach Cuba without difficulty from China, obtained questionable Belize visas either at the Belizean Embassy in Havana, or from Cuban counterfeiters, flew to Haiti (where the government probably places a low priority on screening visitors) and from there to Belize. Let's pick up the account from the statement of the nation's Minister of Police, Doug Singh, as quoted on Channel Seven:
...[as] our surveillance video camera demonstrates, each one of these passengers had a duffel bag, not a very large duffel bag that they carried with them as they entered the van that was waiting for them. The camera indicated that from landing, the plane landed at I believe 6:54 p.m., the camera that showed the individuals walking out the airport was at 7:07 p.m. In a matter of 12 or 13 minutes those individuals have landed, have been processed through immigration, processed through customs and had left the airport. Now you and I know that when we go through Phillip Goldson International Airport we don't get through that quickly. We suspect that what the ring does or what they do is pick up the individuals at the airport, they take them up north immediately, we believe if they do stay, they stay at the Princess Hotel at the free zone and they are whisked across the border perhaps within hours. So it is not our belief that these individuals spend very much more than 12 hours in this countr."
Subsequently six immigration inspectors were fired and some were arrested.
Belize's northern border is with Mexico; it is bounded on the west by Guatemala...for some understandable, and some obscure, reasons, when OTMs want to enter the U.S. as illegals, they often take roundabout routes, such as this group of Chinese now presumably traveling through Mexico on their way to the Rio Grande...
More Illegalaliens PING
Yep, you better believe money is changing hands down
there, sigh, way too much corruption in Belize. They
need to have tougher laws against corruption.
Call them what they really are... Spies.
On the other hand, their shrimp is divine. Wegman’s carries it, it is produced by some Americans who live down there, and it is as good as it gets (except for those Maine shrimp that are only available for a couple of months in the spring).
In the early 90’s a Capts. would be paid $1000 to $1500 per head and the mates (usually 2) got $500 to $750 for a two day run trip. There seemed to be and endless supply of S. African slippers and mates. “We” caught lots of them!
We were never able to bust a charter company but they had to know what was going on. I guess they didn't mind as long as they got their cut.
Maine rock shrimp! YUM!
I love them, and I become a complete pest at the fishmonger when March rolls around.
From the article:
“Several comments: First, it is encouraging to see even in this not-very-enlightened Third World nation that the press sees some utility in immigration statistics, a subject I have mentioned perhaps too often in these blogs.”
Which seems to me a gratuitous swipe against a country of which the writer knows very little!
From further coverage, it is reported that six immigration officials have been arrested, at least one of whom is talking.
Belize, and other countries in similar situations, are used as a springboard for illegal entry to the US because the southern boarder is the easiest point of entry, and if caught the illegal may be deported only back to Mexico or Belize, not all the way back to China.
Does anyone know if China is accepting any deportees from the US? I thought that they were refusing to accept their citizens back.
“Chinese Illegals Coming to U.S. via Haiti (!) and Belize”
Ship them back to China.
Ping!
and South Texas
[South Texas:]Brownsville woman jailed in Chinese immigrant case
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2426704/posts
Another immigrant chase ends in Palmview[more Chinese illegals in South Texas]
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2179223/posts
open borders ping — how they’re getting here
Obama is probably toasting them at some golf course.
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