Our ageing sick father all alone yet they won’t process our visas after 8 years – Family awaiting US immigrant visa

The Martinson family, comprising three adult children have appealed to the US embassy in Ghana, to attend to their immigrant visa applications.

The family, resident at Berekusu in the Eastern Region, say they have waited eight years to have their application processed by the US embassy.

Speaking in an interview with ClassFMonline, the oldest of the three, Beryl Martinson, explained that: “An immigration petition was filed by my father, who is a US citizen under the Family First Preference (F1) Visa, available only for unmarried sons or daughters 21-years-old or older.

“Since May, 2014, when a petition was filed, the actual process of getting to the stage of Documentarily qualified in 2020, began in 2019. Not much attention has been given the F1 category since 2020, despite the backlog cases. The embassy has attributed the delay to COVID-19.”

The second daughter of the family, Emily Martinson, indicated her father was aged and cannot wait to come back home to Ghana, however, he awaits the family’s arrival to ensure they are fully settled before he returns home.

“My dad is over 70 years now. He has challenges with his health, he has been in and out of surgery several times. You can imagine, you can imagine him having to go through all that without a single family member being around him. Sometimes when he calls, and you see all that pain in his eyes, you just wish you could be of help.

“But how can you, when you’re limited by distance and a visa? It’s been like that for the past seven years and my dad is actually getting old[er] by the day,” she said.

The last child of the family, who is a banker also bemoaned the family’s inability to have a long-term plan here due to the unknown future.

“So currently, I really want to go back to school. That’s what happened two years ago, after my first degree. After my first degree, I wanted to go back to school, I held on for so long, not wanting to throw away money if I had to leave in the middle of the course. But, it didn’t happen, I just went ahead, now I’m done, I want to continue but the future is uncertain.

“We’re pleading with the embassy, my dad is getting worse, kindly fast-track our visa applications. We’ve been waiting eight years, this is not good, please, if we know we aren’t going, we can live our lives here permanently but putting us on hold is not helping us plan properly especially when our dad is not well,” she said.

Meanwhile the US ambassador to Ghana, Virginia Palmer has assured persons awaiting their immigrant visa application that efforts are being made to reduce the backlog of visa applications.

“You can be assured that reducing wait times for immigrant visas is very much on our minds, so we’ll keep working to reduce the backlogs,” the US ambassador said in a video, posted on the embassy’s YouTube page, Friday, 21 October 2022, on updates on the visa processes.

The US embassy in Ghana also announced the reduction in wait time for non-immigrant visa appointments.

Applicants will now have to wait for less than six months for visa appointments.

The US ambassador to Ghana, explained: “The current wait time for non-immigrant visa appointments at the US embassy is now less than six months.

“That’s down from two and half years when I arrived earlier this year. That’s still too long but we are still taking steps to continue to reduce wait times, particularly for renewal.”