Visa lottery winners decry US Embassy Rejection

A number of people who have called at the Chronicle offices in Accra recently have variously accused the United States Embassy of denying many who legitimately win visa lotteries from entering America.

The public affairs section of the embassy, reacting to the allegations has, however, denied all the allegations.

Those who poured their frustrations out at our offices said after a winner of the lottery has been made to pay assorted fees and undergo expensive tests, he or she is often dismissed on flimsy, or questionable reasons.

The whopping sums they lose are breaking marriages and forcing some victims to lead wretched lives, it was gathered.

A teacher, Kofi Atakorah, who failed to do so when asked at the interview to mention offhand the name of the pupil who placed last in his last terminal examination, was denied the visa eventually, it was reported.

An accountant who failed to answer to the satisfaction of an interview panel a question on the profession was also reportedly denied a visa.

For soliciting the assistance of someone to fill some forms relevant to the visa acquisition, others were denied the visa.

"What they at times do is they ask you to copy from the original papers you have filed with them, just to test whether you wrote them yourself.

And if, because you are unable to write well, you make somebody help you to fill the form, they disqualify you," was a complaint from one of them.

Others included disqualifications on the grounds of omitting the minutest detail such as a dot in a signature.

In fact, the omission of a dot in her signature was what disqualified Dinah Duah, a seamstress, Chronicle was told.

A father and the whole family missed the visa because, "the child did not resemble the father." What hurt the rejected applicants most, they said, was the fact that they are made to incur a cost of ?1.7 million each in undergoing an HIV/AIDS test.

After that they pay ?120,000 to obtain a police report and pay ?3,918,000 each at the interview stage at the embassy.

"This has to be paid by each person in the family applying for the visa - including babies still suckling at their mother's breasts."

In all, an average family size of five that applies for a visa lottery ends up paying about ?30 million for various services, it was gathered.

"If you raised a loan to pay all these because you trusted in the lawful lottery, you won and at the last minute were rejected on some dubious fault, you would feel hopeless and helpless," another said.

Chronicle further gathered that the outcry against the US embassy over visa lottery is peculiar to Ghana; the complaints are not known in Togo and other neighbouring countries.

The disqualification of people in Ghana started over the use of one postal box by various applicants in the same extended family, church or association, the paper learnt.

But soon after the embassy in Accra was attacked in the media, the rejection on grounds of mass use of postal boxes stopped.

Soon it was the failure to provide the specific date of birth that disqualified the applicant, whether or not their parents were literate enough to have noted the date.

And currently, several other considerations result in the rejection of winners of the visa lottery, the wailing complainants said.

But the public affairs section of the US embassy denied the allegation that it deliberately subjects some Ghanaians who have won the DV lottery to frustrations, in a bid to refuse them entry into America.

In an interview Susan Parker-Burns, the information officer, explained that the embassy considers high education and specialized occupations as well as experience as the two determinant factors for the issuance of entry visas to a DV lottery winner.

She further stated that the embassy thoroughly studies all the documents of various winners some of which, she noted, turn out to be forged by the supposed winners.

She explained that it is the exposition of such fraudulent deals that results in refusal of entry visas which some applicants do not understand and for which reason they accuse the embassy of deliberate frustration.

Parker-Burns suggested that no physical features were used to refuse any applicant, "except proven by a DNA test."

She maintained that the embassy puts premium on the visa lottery in Ghana, as the country ranks quite high among the world's stakers.

She revealed that over 5,000 people won the lottery last year, while about 6,333 people applied for this year's DV lottery.

On specialized occupations, she said, such applicants are trained in America, in order to meet the American labour standard requirements.