A cautionary tale that illustrates the importance of accuracy when filling in the entry and of course the DS260. IN this DV2015 case a simple mistake costs Green Card for the selectee in Ghana.

Let’s call this gentleman John Smith. John attended his interview a few days ago and was denied his visa for a simple mistake that I believe to be nothing more sinister than a genuine error. The CO denied him because his original eDV entry (not the DS260, the online entry itself), showed him as having no first name – just a middle and lastname. In reality his firstname was in the middlename field.

The gentleman sent me some screenshots of his eDV confirmation page and his 1NL (the “you have been selected” letter).

The eDV shows his entry as Smith, John – exactly as you would expect.

The 1NL has his name (above the address and after the “Dear”) as “NFN John Smith” and “Dear NFN John Smith”.

Check out this image. There is a checkbox under each name, and the NFN is printed when someone has selected “No First Name”. These fields are process by computers, so I would be certain that the selectee made that mistake, KCC don’t retype anything. The Confirmation on the entry makes sense (i.e. not showing the firstname), and the first clue of the error was the NFN (No First Name) on the 2NL. However, it is OBVIOUS that is you provide a middle name, and say there is no first name, then the name provided as the middle name is actually your firstname.

However, all submitted cases are checked for duplicate entries, so they may believe that John Smith tried to enter with John as the firstname and John as the middlename (in a second entry). The CO could have put him on AP and put the case back for checks on John Smith, but for some reason he decided not to do that. The embassy/CO was particularly harsh, and the embassy is one (Accra, Ghana) that shows up as one with very high denial rates as shown in my league table .

What could he have done. Well if he had understood the critical nature of seeing NFN on his 1NL he could have contacted KCC and he could have possibly have got them to re-run the background checks prior to scheduling his interview. It might have delayed things but it would have diffused the issue somewhat.  KCC would not have corrected the error itself, but they would have passed the case to the embassy with a file note explaining that both names had been checked. As it is, the selectee has lost his chance for the Green Card and spent money on the medicals and processing fee – not a small amount of money in Ghana.

The lesson for the rest of us is to take these issues seriously. I read time and time again stories from people such as “my brother knows someone that had that problem and he got away with it, blah blah”. Sure, some cases will be accepted with errors, and some won’t – but why take that risk on what is such a simple process if we just follow the instructions and take advice from genuine experienced people.

 

simple mistake costs Green Card