Nigerians who have applied for study visas to the United States of America have continued to complain over the incessant denial by the consulate, especially in recent times. This is as the US Embassy Abuja on Monday tweeted that report on its embassy banning student visas was fake.
The embassy’s tweet read, “FakeNews Alert! Be advised, reports of student visa ban for Nigerians is false. If you have seen such manufactured item on Facebook and twitter or received it via WhatsApp, please communicate that it is false.”
However, few seconds after the tweet, students who had been denied visas in recent times took to social media platforms, responding to the US Embassy and expressing their dissatisfaction on huge numbers of student visa application denials.
According to @nnaezema “My friend was given admission by a school in US and you denied him visa twice. So why shouldn’t we believe the news?”
Olayinka Adio, with twitter handle @Yincle queried the embassy stating “how can you explain denying a student who have secured admission with scholarship and also have an uncle, a lecturer at the same school he was admitted, who will make his stay and education more comfortable, a visa after two attempts in two months?”
“After my interview, I asked the consular why I was refused and he told me ‘that should tell you something’ . I still can’t understand that something,” Folaranmi Saheed, @Listentoany twitted.
Another student with twitter handle @officialflav stated, “But you guys denied my friend USA study visa just last week, just because you think he won’t return to Nigeria again.”
According to @RealOlaudah on twitter, “Many people that apply for American Visa were denied without any justification. I was told that I won’t come back when I only wanted to stay two weeks. It is immoral to be collecting Visa Fee from Nigerians and act as if it is a revenue source for USA. Things like this may support.”
These developments are coming barely one month after the suspension of Drop Box. Since the drop box suspension, the interview waiver system, by the Embassy and Consulate of the United States of America in Nigeria, application for the US visa has taken a tougher turn, especially with the long visa appointment dates, which many regard as unrealistic.
While Nigerian applicants seeking visa reissuance under the B1/B2, F, M, L and H visa classes are no longer guaranteed visas across the above classes due to the recent suspension, they are even faced with a much tougher challenge of getting favourable visa appointment dates.
Some applicants who were at the Embassy and Consulate recently noted that their visa appointments dates were stretched months after their planned trip to the US, which implies that the event or prgramme they seek visa to attend in the US would have come and gone before their appointment is due.
Maurice Ocheme, a travel and immigration expert, said the suspension of drop-box is a deliberate intention by the US to limit Nigerians that get visa. “They want to look good so they can claim they did not reject people visa. For diplomatic cases, if you reject visa, you have to give evidence of how. So, what they want to do is to reduce the number of people that apply so that nobody is going to accuse them of rejecting visa.
“By removing drop-box, everybody has to apply, so they will reduce the number of visas they treat in a day and reduce the number of people that work on the visa. At the end of the day, they will successfully reduce the number of visas they issue to Nigerians to may be 50,000 in a year as against may be 300,000”, he said.
Jitten Vyas, the Chief Operating Officer of VFS Global in Africa, last year announced that about 200,000 Nigerians applied annually for visas to various countries through his organisation.
According to Vyas, many Nigerians always apply for visas to travel to different countries of the world for leisure, studies and business trips.
“There is a growing interest of young Nigerians wanting to study, work, live, go for leisure and do business overseas today.”
Travel experts and agents have alleged that over 60percent of 200,000 applicants are denied visas annually without refund.
IFEOMA OKEKE
