US issued almost 5,300 visitors’ visa to Guyanese last year

Feb 12, 2020 News

The US issued almost 5,300 visitors’ visas last year to Guyanese, a slight increase from 2018.

According to figures by the US Department of State, last year there were 5,296 non-immigrant visas issued.
In 2017, there were 25,338 visas issued for the B1/B2 category.
In 2018, this fell to 4,923 Guyanese to whom visas were issued for holidaying purposes, almost 20,000 fewer than the previous year.
In recent years, the US Embassy had relaxed its stringent requirements for Guyanese and the number of visas issued for the popular B1-B2 category (visitors’ visas) rose sharply.
The number of Guyanese overstaying illegally in the US is also negligible, the US Embassy had reported.
For the fiscal year 2018, the number of families migrating had risen sharply. There were 7,506 immigrant visas issued. This compared to 4,000 during 2017.
In 2018, the US Embassy became even busier after it was handed the job to interview Cubans for immigrant visas.
It is unclear whether Guyanese were just not interested anymore or that the number of applicants had hit its peak, or just that the US Embassy has reduced issuing visas.
Guyana and the US have been enjoying a closer relationship especially with the recent discovery and now production of a large quantity of oil offshore.
Years ago, there were significant rackets involving visas with Guyanese willing to pay millions of dollars to go to the US.
One US Embassy official was even jailed following a visa racket.
In terms of immigrant visas, since 2008, the average number of persons who received visas to the US was around 4,500.
In 2015, the US issued almost 7.2M visitors’ visas worldwide. This went down to 6.9M in 2016 but fell to 6.3M in 2017.
For 2017, in the western hemisphere, of 28 nations, Guyana was ahead of 15 other countries in terms of the number of immigrant visas issued.
At 4,096, it was ahead of Venezuela at 2,917; Trinidad and Tobago at 1,285; Suriname at zero; Barbados at 1,789 and Brazil at 3,502.
Leading the western hemisphere for the number of visas issued in 2017 was Mexico at 86,876.
The Dominican Republic was almost 50,000. El Salvador and Haiti also have a significant number of immigrants to the US, so does Jamaica.