ILLEGAL ALIENS IN BELIZE: FINDINGS FROM THE 1984 AMNESTY’ zyx Joseph zyxwvuts 0. Palacio zyxwvu In mid-1984 the government of Belize announced an amnesty period for “illegal aliens” in Belize to register with the police. The main target group was Central American refugee/migrants who had been fleeing into the country since the late 1970s in response to the political violence and economic dislocation spreading throughout the region.2 This chapter reviews the information collected during the amnesty and presents demographic and socioeconomic profiles of the four main ref- ugeehigrant populations in Belize zyxw - Guatemalans, Salvadorans, Hon- durans, and Mexicans. This study also provides the most realistic estimate available of the number of Central American refugeehigrants residing in Belize as of September zyxwvu 1984. Belize - Haven zyxwv for Central American RefugeelM @rants For whatever reason they came, the Central Americans found in Belize a secure haven. As we shall see, most came without any travel docu- ments across the heavily forested border with Guatemala. There were I This study was done under the auspices of a grant from the Hemispheric Migration Project coordinated by the Intergovernmental Committee for Migration zyx (ICM) and the Center for Immigration Policy and Refugee Assistance (CIPRA) of Georgetown Univer- sity. Additional funding came from the Inter-American Foundation (IAF). I wish to record gratitude to ICM, CIPRA, and IAF. * The use of the term “refugee/migrant” for those coming to Belize is an attempt to include within one broad category, persons who may be coming as refugees as well as economic migrants.