NIGERIAN visitors to the US overstay their visa provisions 7% of the time making it difficult for them to get new visas when they want to return for visits according to the American embassy.  

Revealing the statistic in Lagos yesterday, William Laidlaw, the US consul affairs, also added that a lot of Nigerians enter incorrect data in their visa application forms. He attributed visa officers’ mistakes to wrong information provided by so-called agents that claim to have special information about how to obtain visas. 

Mr Laidlaw warned Nigerians against patronising agents, adding that the visa application process was straight-forward and all requirements provided on the consulate’s website. Contrary to the popular belief of high denial rates, Mr Laidlaw said non-immigration visas were issued about 60% of the time. 

“As a member of the United States government, I admit we make mistakes but the reasons why we make mistakes are because those that have to do with visa services advising people, do incorrect things. That has to do with the way people present themselves and information to us. 

“In actuality, the non-immigrant visa acceptance rate here is between 52% and 58% and if we include the immigrant visas, we approve almost 70% of our applications here in Lagos.  So there is a lot of myth outside, mostly negative, about us,” Mr Laidlaw added. 

He said the overstay rate for the 21 countries on the US waiver list was less than 3%, compared with Nigeria's 7%. Over  the past five years, despite the stopping of the US Diversity Visa Lottery, Mr Laidlaw said visa applications increased by 179%.  

According to Mr Laidlaw, each day, the US mission attends to an average of 1,100 Nigerian applicants and last year alone, 240,000 applications were received. Acting non-immigrant consular chief Amanda Roberson, said the visa interview was less about documents and more about conversation with consular adjudicators.