Nigerian actress and comedian, Helen Paul has shared her experience on how she was able to secure a visa to relocate to America after previously being denied.
Helen Paul was recently interviewed by media personality Daddy Freeze, who took a keen interest in her relocation to the United States of America.
When asked about her relocation story, she revealed that she did not initially plan to relocate, adding that she only needed a visa to visit her godfather with her husband. However, after applying for the visitation visa she was denied shortly after.
She said: “I didn’t know that I was going to relocate, I had only applied for my visiting visa but I got rejected. For what reason? I wasn’t sure, and it was the same day as my PHD graduation from the University of Lagos. My husband wanted us to visit my Godfather in Chicago to celebrate, so when I got the rejection I was surprised and then we spoke to my father who said to get me a lawyer to re-appeal.”
After re-appealing, she discovered that her initial visa was denied because she had worked in the US during a previous visitation.
She continued: “When he got us a lawyer, the lawyer said ‘I’m going to call you back’ and when she called back she said, ‘I see that you’ve been doing some jobs, you have an account and you haven’t been paying tax.”
Helen Paul confessed that she was unaware of the fact that her names and account were put down for taxes after small gigs.
“I was like ‘Is that it?’ because most times as entertainers we don’t have the information. We come abroad with a visiting visa and we put it on Facebook or Instagram and then we have people calling us to say ‘Come to our bar, party or birthday,’ But when they are paying you, some of them are innocently wicked or they don’t know, they would put your name and account on their tax as a record that they’ve given you a job,” she explained.
Eventually, her lawyer got back to her with an option of a visa for entertainers, which provided a stay for one or two years, and after some encouragement from her Godfather, she took it.
“So we were told to do the visa for entertainers called the J1 visa, it’s a one or two years green card. And then the lawyer called me back saying ‘Congratulations, from your resume you have a PhD from one of the best universities in Nigeria,’ and I said yes. When she got everything from me, we started exchanging emails and my godfather told me to try for it and I did,” she concluded.
