Bovi speaks out about his US visa ban story on With Chude
“I didn’t give the exact details of what happened but the long and short is I think the visa officer I met was very unfriendly. So, everything blew out of proportion, it escalated in the news, and there were different versions of the story — ‘oh Bovi got in a scuffle with a visa issuing officer, Bovi is banned from the USA and all.’ I was really embarrassed when people started to spin the story, because how do you have access to a visa issuing officer when they’re protected by a glass wall?
“If I remember correctly all I did was ask him if he saw how many visas I had gotten in the last 10 years? You know because in the last 10 years, I’ve always had 2 American visas — one for work and one for holidays, at the same time — and his response was ‘there was a new sheriff in town’ and he pushed my passport back at my wife back and leaned to pick his jug. A black guy for that matter.” Although that was the Trump era when denials were crazy.
Going by the definition of what happened, banned is the appropriate word. In 2022 when I went back, the lady who interviewed me and my wife again kept staring at the computer. She left her seat to probably see a senior colleague and when she got back, she kept typing. She mentioned that she has to deny us again, but she is giving us a waiver and we should keep checking our emails. I reached out to my friends at the embassy and explained what had happened and they told us that the person who had interviewed us in 2020 gave us a Nonwaiver which is like permanent ineligibility. But the reasons for doing that were not justifiable. They told us the decision has to come from Washington, and since the latest interviewer gave a waiver, they will review.
After two weeks they called us back and asked us to bring our passports back instead of going through the process of reapplying. After a few months I reapplied for my work permit as well and I got it.
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