The United States Department of State has declared that the
United States of America will not issue almost all immigrant and non-immigrant
visas to Sierra Leoneans applying at the Embassy in Freetown.
This, the release said, is due to continued delays by the Government
of Sierra Leone to accept its citizens who are subject to a final order of
removal.
Controversy has reigned between USA and the Sierra Leone
Immigration running back to 2017 over the issue of the USA’s decision to deport
to Sierra Leone felons that the Immigration Department maintained are not
Sierra Leoneans, even when they are said to be carriers of the country’s
passport. The US threatened to deny immigration and other government officials
visas to enter the US if the government did not back down.
As the standoff continues, on Wednesday, 14th August, 2019,
sixteen deportees arrived at Lungi Airport from the US. The Police spokesman said they were deported
for alleged criminal and other immigration-related offences.
In
August last year, Saren Idaho who said he had no connection to Sierra Leone and
had never been to the country was deported. Prince Latoya, 47, was on the same deportation
flight and is in the same situation. They were among 17 Sierra Leoneans who had
been convicted of committing crimes in the US. They ended up on that flight
after staffs at Sierra Leone’s embassy in Washington DC were put under pressure
by US officials.
Both men, who had never met before coming to
Sierra Leone, were long-term residents of the US. But they said they were
originally from the Caribbean, which the US authorities dispute.
Isha Sillah, Director for the Americas and the
Pacific at the foreign ministry here said that the US immigration authorities
submitted documents to the embassy that the two men were from Sierra Leone. Without
cross-checking, embassy officials issued them each with an Emergency Travel
Certificate (ETC) and said they did so because of pressure piled on them by the
State Department and the Department of Homeland Security to accept them as
Sierra Leoneans.
American authorities denied, stating that in
fact, Sierra Leone has a history of refusing to issue travel documents for its
citizens, a situation which put the country under temporary US visa sanctions
in 2017.
