Thinking about a stateside summer vacation, but have no visa? It may still be possible.

That's because in February, the US embassy consular section is expected to re-open to receive applications for tourist visas.

That hasn't been the case since March 16th 2020 when Covid shut down the world as well as Belize's US embassy. But yesterday when we caught up with Charge d' Affairs Keith Gilges he told us that February is the mark, although that could change.

Cherisse Halsall:
"Sir, any indication when the U.S. will begin to accept applications for tourist visas again?"

Keith Gilges, Charge d Affairs, U.S. Embassy
"Well, we are hopefully that by February, that sort of the tentative date that's out there right now to be able to start doing tourists again. We can do some visas on an emergency basis but it's a relatively high bar to be able to do that, but we are anticipating February. If it can be sooner believe me we'd like to get up and running again as much I think a lot of Belizeans would like to be able to come in and get visas to travel. At this point we are looking at February is our start up date. Again, that is a flexible thing so don't hold me to it."

Reporter
"In the meantime students and those others are being processed?"

Keith Gilges, Charge d Affairs, U.S. Embassy
"So there are some categories of emergency visas that are being processed, so yes, there was a group of Belizeans students that actually going to Taiwan, our other great partner, and a number of them didn't have transit visas, so we said absolutely. That's the sort of thing we are going to prioritized and say yes for those students. If they didn't go then they were going to lose their program and that was so important, so we opened up and said we are going to process those visas. So we do do emergency visas on a case by case basis as determined by the consular chief."

Channel 7