The Central American caravan of migrants and refugees has been making headlines in America - while it is an issue for the US to resolve, it doesn't mean that we should exclude ourselves from the discourse and ignore our own border issues with Guatemala. So Belize hosted a SICA meeting specifically geared towards addressing these migration concerns. The 47th meeting of the Migration Directors of Central America was held in San Ignacio today as part of Belize pro-tem SICA Presidency. Belize's Director of Immigration Diana Locke is chairing and she told the Press Office what her regional colleagues are in Belize to discuss:...
Diana Locke, Director - Immigration Department
"Belize is hosting the 47th annual meeting of OCAM (Organization for Migration of Central America). Its the first time we are doing it as a part of the SICA presidency and so today we are having the first meeting as a part of that SICA presidency. We have representation from all the Central American and Dominican Republic countries and today we expect to be discussing a number of issues meeting at the regional security ways of cooperation between Central America and the Caribbean. We are looking at the OCAM alert system. We are looking at the Cuban Migratory policies that have change over the years and how that's affecting this region. We are also going to be looking at the mass movement of people. The Panamanian government is hosting a major event in 2019 and there is an agreement which we all signed as to how we would handle the mass movement of people coming into the region through Mexico or through Panama, El Salvador or Guatemala and by extension they will be transiting Belize. So we are looking at that."
Reporter
"This morning you've made a special visit to the border. Can you tell us what happened there?"
Diana Locke, Director - Immigration Department
"Yes, the Guatemala student crossing is an unusual occurrence in this region. We have about 600 students that are registered in Belize schools from Guatemala. We also have daily crossings about 450 of them. The other 150 make arrangements by the week, month, semester to stay here and so this morning we took the delegates out to have a look at that actual crossing, which was very interesting considering we've now have the new fence which makes things a lot more orderly and so we wanted to expose them to that to see what happens. They had lots of questions about the illegals. We look at the river crossing and that sort of stuff. That was a short visit there this morning to give them an idea of how we handle a phenomenon like that."
It is the first time the meeting is being held in Belize.
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