ST. JOHN’S, Antigua, Jan 6, CMC – The Antigua and Barbuda government has described as “false and misleading” a secondary school student had been denied a visa and in the process lost an opportunity to obtain a scholarship to study in the United States.
The Antigua Observer newspaper on Monday carried a story headlined “When promises fail: A student’s scholarship lost between approval and cancellation” claiming that the student had in November last year after being interviewed by US embassy officials in Barbados, had been approved for a “F-1 student visa….”
But the newspaper reported that after the US announcement in December suspending new visa issuance for Antigua and Barbuda effective January 1, this year, the student’s visa was cancelled.
‘No warning, no explanation. Just a status change that erased months of preparation and years of academic work that had earned the scholarship in the first place,” the newspaper reported.
In a statement, Foreign Affairs Minister, E. Paul Chet Greene, said he was “categorically” rejecting the newspaper article published that suggested the student’s visa was cancelled as a result of Presidential Proclamation 10998 and contrary to assurances given by the Government that visas issued before January 1, 2026, would be respected.
He said that following direct inquiries, United States authorities have confirmed that the case described has nothing to do with the Presidential Proclamation.
“The applicant did not qualify for a visa under Section 214(b) of U.S. immigration law. As is standard practice, an indication of approval at the interview does not constitute final U.S. visa issuance.”
Greene said that all applications undergo mandatory post-interview vetting, including checks routed through Washington, D.C and “it is during this process that applications may be refused if statutory requirements are not met.
“No visa was issued in this case,” he said, adding “had the application been refused under the Presidential Proclamation, the applicant would have received a different refusal notice expressly citing that legal basis. That did not occur.”
Further Greene said that the photograph published in the article, purporting to show a cancelled visa, was examined and found to be entirely unrelated.
“It depicts an application from India for an H-1B work visa, not a student visa, and bears no connection to the alleged Antiguan case. The Ministry is therefore compelled to conclude that the article is false and deliberately misleading, constructed to suggest—maliciously —that visas approved or issued prior to January 1, 2026 were not being honoured. The Government of Antigua and Barbuda stands by its statements: validly issued visas are respected.”
Greene said that the “article’s claims are not supported by facts and should be treated accordingly”.
CMC/ag/ir/2026