7 News Belize: The Tough Questions
Yesterday evening, the Ministry Of Immigration sent out a release making the case that there wasn't anything seriously irregular about three charter flights that landed in Belize from Haiti with 32 supposedly Japanese visitors...First off, the release does not address the fact that the plane flew in from Port Au Prince Haiti...Second, 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, to say the least...Third, one of the so called procedural irregularities is that no record was made of where the Japanese visitors got their visas...[F]or 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...more...