When migrating to another country……there’s no such thing as a typo

If you’ve ever been in the same room with immigration or customs officials of a country you were not born in, one thing is very clear…..they do not trust you. That is always the starting point of your interaction with them.

It does not matter that you are just passing through and only need a transit visa for 8 hours or you are on a company-sponsored conference for two weeks.

The experience is even more harrowing if you’ve declared your intentions to settle in that country. Not only do you have to go over your documents thoroughly, it helps to have a lawyer peruse them and even have a trusted relative or friend take a third look at them because even a single-digit typographical error can throw your life into a tail-spin you might not be able to get out of.

And even after all that – you now have to hope and pray the government data entry clerk/officer inputs it all correctly because if they don’t, the burden still remains on you to prove whether the data was incorrectly input by the officer and you were not trying to cheat.

Such is the case for Eunice Nyakundi, a battered wife who fled from her abusive husband in Kenya to settle in the United States a little over 10 years ago. On her visa application, one of the figures on her birth date was transposed and almost $50,000 and a couple of DNA tests later, she is in bad health, broke and not able to reunite with her children because the embassy in Nairobi does not “trust her”.

Although already a US citizen, this bureaucratic technicality keeps raising the bar Nyakundi has to jump over as she tries to reunite with her children.

Immigration suitcase photo by Isabel Mar

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