So, what does the PUP think about all those born Guatemalans who hold Belizean nationality, and have been living here?
As you probably heard by now, in Belize's Constitution, under Section 29.3, reads, "No person shall be entitled…to be a citizen of Belize or be granted citizenship of Belize if such person shows any allegiance to or is a citizen of a country which does not recognize the independence, sovereignty or territorial integrity of Belize …" End quote.
Though it doesn't say it outrightly, this law refers specifically to Guatemala, since that country disputes Belize's territorial integrity by claiming half the country.
Yet, there are hundreds of Guatemalan Belizeans who have made their lives in in this country after applying and getting nationality the right way, regardless of whether or not their applications should have been processed and approved.
When the press asked the Opposition Leader for his party's perspective on this very convoluted issue, he said that the party's lawyers have been tasked to research it and advise the executive appropriately:
Hon. John Briceno, PUP Party Leader
"I am in possession of a letter that the Belize Chamber of Commerce sent to me raising that very concern that there may be a mismatch with the Belize constitution and the Guatemalan constitution. Our constitution does not allow us to grant citizen of a country that does not recognize Belize with its territorial integrity and this case obviously is Guatemala and then Guatemala does not recognize dual citizenship. So they do not recognize renunciation of citizenship. So there is an issue, but we have a copy of this letter from the Chamber and as I see this is an issue that's both legal and political. Legal, because of the mismatch of the Belizean constitution and political, because we have thousands of Guatemalan citizens that are now Belizean citizens accordingly since 1981 and what are we going to do with these people."
"These people by all effect are Belizeans. So what I have done is I have asked our legal advisor to work with our attorneys to look at this matter from a legal perspective and then to provide us some sort of guidance and secondly after we receive the legal advice then we will have to meet with our parliamentary caucus and then we will need to meet to agree on our position on this issue, but let me remind and we need to think about this - that we are talking about the lives of many people who love this country. So we have to be careful and we need to make sure that we get it right."
We have seen an electronic petition calling for, among other things, the authorities to rescind the nationality granted to such Guatemalan Born Belizeans.
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