Immigration Corner | My visa was cancelled for abuse

Dear Mrs Walker-Huntington,

I am a Jamaican citizen with a B1/B2 US visa, which was cancelled yesterday. The immigration officer said that I abused my visa. I travelled twice in 2017 and 2019 and stayed for four months.

I travelled again to the US in 2021 and stayed there for five months because I got the COVID virus and I was placed in quarantine. My mistake was not reporting it or going to the hospital.

As a result, my daughter was denied a visa, and the officer cancelled mine for abuse.

Please tell me what to do because I was given six months, and I returned to my country before that time expired.

SW

Dear SW,

First of all, no one is entitled to a visa, and it can be revoked at any time or denied for any reason.

Second, when a person travels to America on a visitor’s visa (B1/B2) and they are given six months at the airport by the Customs and Border Protection Officer, it does not mean that you are to stay in the country for months on end. The six months is given as a courtesy even if you say you intend to spend one week in the event you become ill and are unable to return home within a week or two. The time it would take you to apply for an extension if you became ill after a week or two would result in your overstaying your time.

When someone comes to America and stays for four and five months, the presumption is that you do not have a job in your home country and that you were working while in America. The big question is, how does one support oneself in the US without working for four or five months?

If, as you say, you became ill with COVID during one of your long visits, it does not take four or five months of quarantine from COVID and being unable to travel. You also did not explain your 2017 and 2019 visits of four months.

If you have evidence for why you stayed in America all those months and how you independently supported yourself while you were in America, you can reapply for the visa and hope that your evidence is persuasive enough for the consular officer to grant you another non-immigrant visa.

Your situation should stand as a stark warning to holders of B1/B2 visas that going to America for months on end and leaving before the six-month stay expires jeopardises your visa for future use or renewal.

Dahlia A. Walker-Huntington, Esq. is a Jamaican-American attorney who practises immigration law in the United States; and family, criminal and international law in Florida. She is a mediator and former special magistrate and hearing officer in Broward County, Florida. info@walkerhuntington.com.