Belize to adopt the use of CARICOM passports – The Immigration Department and Nationality Offices countrywide will not be accepting passport applications this week as they are modifying, upgrading and testing an issuance system to accommodate the new CARICOM passport.
“We have done a complete revision of the entire passport book,” commented Gareth Murillo, Director of Immigration. “As it relates to CARICOM, there will be CARICOM logo and the words Caribbean Community on the cover of the passport. It will still bear Belize’s Coat of Arms and still say Belize Passport. In the interior, we have not had an upgrade or a facelift of our passport since 1996, which is some 13 or so years ago. We have decided to go with a more updated look; a more nationalistic look. You will see a lot of the national symbols of Belize carried throughout the design of the book.”
Belizeans traveling in the Caribbean will now be able to stay in another member state for six months. Murillo says that the new passports will be valid for ten years once again. “It should not affect travel outside the Caribbean, the CARICOM Passport still remains a national passport,” continued Murillo. “It is a Belize Passport. Before 2005 Belize passports were valid for 10 years. When we went to the machine passports in 2005 we followed an international recommendation that we go to 5 year validity. A lot of members of the public have had some issues with that and so we made a decision to go back to our 10 year validity.”
Suriname was the first country to issue the CARICOM Passport in January of 2005, followed by St. Vincent and the Grenadines, St. Kitts and Nevis and Dominica. Antigua and Barbuda, issued the new Passport in January of 2006. In 2007, Saint Lucia, Trinidad and Tobago, Grenada, Guyana and Barbados issued the Passport. Jamaica is expected to issue the new pass port by the end of 2009. Murillo says that the new passports will be delivered later this week or next week.
