Belize Strains to Cope With Influx of Illegal Aliens From Central American Nations

An estimated 25,000 people have slipped illegally into Belize from neighboring Central American nations, straining government services in this English-speaking former British colony.

“While we are not saying that all our problems are caused by the aliens, because that certainly is not true, they contribute a great deal to it,” Prime Minister Manuel A. Esquivel said in a recent interview. “The vast majority of people are not refugees. They are moving across to what they see as a better opportunity.”

Belize, a nation of only 160,000 people, is required by its own laws to provide such services as health care and education to all regardless of citizenship or whether they classify as refugees.

Officials also claim that some immigrants have brought new crime and violence to a nation where police are unarmed and patrol on bicycles.

“I hope I can avoid sounding prejudiced, but we certainly feel the life style in Central America is sufficiently different from our own,” Esquivel said.

U.N. Camp

Immigration Director Lydia E. Rowland estimates that 3,000 of the 25,000 who fled to Belize qualify as refugees, and about 1,000 of them live in the nearby Valley of Peace refugee camp, built with the assistance of the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner on Refugees.

She said half the illegals are Guatemalans, many coming for seasonal work. The rest, she said, are fleeing armed conflicts in El Salvador and Nicaragua or the economic difficulties of Mexico.

“They walk across the border, clear the land and farm it,” she added. “There are cases where these people have lived for five years in the same area before any official notice was taken.”

In neighboring countries, the poor get little or no government help, but in Belize, the law obligates the government to provide it.

“Their children need to go to school,” the prime minister said. “We have to provide school places for them, in some cases new schools and teachers.

“They need doctors and hospital space, so what it means is that we have an overnight increase in population when our social services are not prepared to absorb it. So it does place economic burdens on us.”

Rowland says the government is doing what it can to help the aliens while at the same trying to get control of the situation through new laws.