U.S. Embassy Alarmed

...At Spate of Visa Fraud
THE UNITED States embassy in Ghana is obviously not happy with the increasing levels of visa fraud in the country.

It has thus promised to weed out elements that engage in such visa frauds from the system.

Addressing the media at round table discussion which provided the latest information on the US Diversity Visa programmes and fraud, Mr. Christopher Hodges of the Public Affairs Office noted that with the increasing numbers of fraud related cases recorded at the embassy for visa application, the embassy has been placed on high alert.

For this reason, he stressed that the embassy has introduced stricter mechanisms to weed out those elements.

Over the last couple of years, he said the embassy has detected a number of fraud cases, with individual visa applicants using falsified information to acquire visas to travel to the United States.

This, he said was the reason why the embassy would not spare any individual or group of persons that attempts to defraud the system through dubious and fraudulent means by making false representation to acquire US visas.

Mr. Hodges warned Ghanaians to be extra vigilant since many of them were being targeted by fraudsters for diabolical schemes under which these fraudsters charged large sums of money to assist with DV lottery applications, claiming some connection to the US government or some method which improves ones chances of winning.

These schemes he said cost Ghanaians lots of money and virtually turns out not improving their chances of winning.

He noted that several arrests have been made involving fraudulent marriages arranged to benefit from the DV programme, emphasising that "we are working with the CID to identify and arrest those involved in perpetrating the fraud".

The embassy has resorted to this move because it says "fraud makes it harder for legitimate people to get their visas" since according to them "because of the marriage fraud, all marriages now undergo careful scrutiny".

Meanwhile, the Diversity Visa Lottery programme has begun, running from October 4, 2006 to December 3, 2006. The lottery is free to enter with no fee charged.

For the DV 2007 programme year, more than 5.5million people worldwide entered the lottery, with approximately 82,000 applicants who may now make an application for immigration visas having been registered and notified.

Ghana is touted by the US government as being one of the most significant beneficiaries of the DV programme.

In terms of lottery winners, the country ranks third in sub Saharan Africa and seventh in the world.

Six of the top 10 countries are said to be in Africa. According to the US embassy, selected winners will be notified by letters and never through or by their email addresses since it has the potential of breeding a scam.

The DV programme operates under US law and makes available 50,000 permanent resident visas annually to people from countries with historically low immigration rates to the United States.