And while the endless Senate inquiry is all about a horse that left the stable so long ago, even the scent of dung is now faint….what's the solution going forward? It should be obvious that e-government - the same kind we told you about in our last segment - is the solution. If every step of the immigration process was indexed and insulated within a secure electronic system - then all these arguments about those that got nationality in a few months wouldn't exist. Every step of the process from visitor, to resident, to citizen, to passport holder would be time-stamped, and time-locked within the system and visible to all parties all down the line - no more funny business with missing files or "wet-stamps."
But, it's impossible to contemplate such an elegant electronic solution for immigration when there's a gaping hole in the system: that's the apex identity document: the birth certificate, which can be fraudulently obtained and used to cut through all the red tape like a hot knife through butter, thus tricking the entire system.
Chief Technology Officer Mike Singh discussed the possible solution today:..
Mike Singh - Chief Technology Officer, GOB
"The problem really starts at where the data initiates which is a vital statistics and the fact that we don't have a connected national citizen registry that connects all the data that originates at vital stats where that person becomes a citizen or where the nationality at immigration, some has a work permit. The work permit system is not tied into the vital stats is not tied into social security. So our intent is to build what we called a national citizen registry, bring all this data together in what we called a date lake. Now if you have one lake of data which is your citizen registry and every pulls information off there, it's very hard for you to manipulate information when everybody is looking at the same information and you could corroborate it simply by doing a search. So that's the intent and that's where we are going. We've been doing a lot of work. We brought a work team that's been meeting for the last year on designing this citizen registry and that's why you heard me so quiet, because I've been sitting in the background doing some of this, but the design of this citizen registry is really intended for us to have confidence in the information that we are giving."
"I want to know that Jules Vasquez was born at Holden Memorial Hospital, I don't know if that is where you were born, and that you were the same person that walks in to get a social security and if you die, that you are properly registered so that your name doesn't come up in any database later on. The only way you can do that is to have one common database that everybody speaks to."
"That's what we are working. The focus isn't solely on immigration right now, it's to work on the core citizen data that immigration reads from."
Muslim Speaks Up For Peace and Tolerance
On Tuesday, New York City fell victim to the second largest terror attack since 9/11. 8 people were killed when a truck rammed into a bike path a few blocks away from the World Trade Centre Memorial. The driver of the truck is a follower of ISIS and a Muslim.
For peace loving followers of Islam, these attacks give their faith a bad name.
That's why, this morning Naveed Mangla, President of the Belize Ahmadiyya Muslim Jama'at explained that those who undertake these terror attacks are not even considered Muslim by many because they don't actually practice the religion.
Naveed Mangla, Belize AHMADIYYA Muslim Jama At President
"More than 1.6 billion people are Muslim right that makes around 24% of the world population Islam so if logically thinking about it. Suppose the religion was promoting violence you would see that chaos would be all over the world if this was part of the religion but it is not. It is only .00001% of these people who call themselves Muslims are doing this. We say that they are not even Muslims because you cannot just assume or belong to a religion and not even practice it."
"If somebody does anything we should just take the individual that is doing something wrong rather than relating him to a religion especially when he is not even practicing it."
"We are very much saddened by the attacks that this individual has rendered. We condemn it."
Balling for Allah?
And moving ahead in the spirit of peace-making, The Ahmadiyya along with Naveed Mangla started a basketball league in Belize about three years ago. The league has grown into something special as young men come together to learn more than just basketball skills. The league sends the different teams to represent Belize at competitions in Mexico, and, today, after much practice they went to Chetumal to take part in a tournament. We spoke to some players and the commissioner about the upcoming competition:
Rodvern Lino, AHMADIYYA Basketball League Commissioner
"It is a pretty fierce competition. Our guys are challenged and pushed to the limit but so far they have been doing well."
Sahar Vasquez, reporter
"How do they do in the tournaments they participate in?"
Rodvern Lino, AHMADIYYA Basketball League Commissioner
"In Campeche, we took U-17 and U-19 and both of them won the tournament. In Cancun, we took U-17 and U-19 again and U-19 won the competition and U-17 fell in the semifinals."
"The core of the team has been together for the entire year working together. We have added some missing links so I think that we will be doing pretty well this year."
Belize has a U-17 and U-19 team representing in this tournament. It concludes on Sunday. We will keep you posted on Belize's standing.
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