Immigration Proposes Strategic Plan to Improve Services

If you’ve ever had to deal with immigration paperwork, you know the frustration, slow service has been a complaint for decades. But change could be on the horizon. Today, the Ministry of Immigration hosted a stakeholder consultation in Belize City to roll out its strategic plan aimed at speeding things up and making services more transparent. The idea is to get key partners involved in shaping the future of immigration services. We spoke with CEO Tanya Santos for the details.

 

Tanya Santos, C.E.O., Ministry of Immigration

“Today we’re having  a consultation on a draft strategic plan for the Ministry of Immigration. It’s been close to a year in the making. We’ve had a lot of back and forth and discussions internally with our staff from to Toledo and in San Pedro. All the way to the Banque border. Thinking about and discussing what are the strategies going forward for us to improve our services, to improve our human resource personnel, and performance. How to address some of the deficiencies in service. How do we strengthen enforcement? How do we work with refugees and strengthen that system as well. And I know that’s the hot topic today. So we have been working a lot behind the scenes in preparing this draft strategic plan. So we have consulted it thoroughly within the ministry, the three departments, nationality and passports, board of management and immigration services, and the refugees department. So now we’re taking this draft out to the public. We’ve invited several of our stakeholders and partners who are influenced by or utilize our services a lot and hoping to get their input and their recommendations so that we can incorporate those. Asking them if it, if they feel that what we have put together addresses all, or at least most of their concerns and plan forward is going to help resolve some of the issues that they have been facing. So we’re glad to have the participation of our partners, members of the public, private sector, international partners. Civil society, other government agencies and others who are formed part of the immigration system of Belize.”