In Summary
- Moriah Yeakula-Korkpor claimed Liberia has a 79 to 80% U.S. visa refusal rate, among the highest globally.
- We have verified this claim by reviewing the U.S. State Department data on visa statistics and found it to be correct.
- Liberia’s 2024 U.S. visa refusal rate stands at 79.38%, ranking among countries with the highest visa denial rates.
On June 6, Cllr. Moriah Yeakula-Korkpor, a Senior Legal Counsel at the Beyond Law Chambers, claimed in a Facebook post that Liberia has a U.S. visa denial rate of 79 to 80 percent – one of the highest in the world.
She made this claim while encouraging Liberians to reflect on why so many visa applicants are denied entry to the United States.
Under U.S. immigration law, a visa refusal occurs when an applicant is formally denied a nonimmigrant visa for failing to meet the eligibility criteria of the visa category or due to other grounds of ineligibility.
The Claim
Excerpt of her post reads: “The way the US embassy can deny Liberians visa, na fun (sic. It’s unbelievable). 79-80% denial rate! One of the highest in the world.”
Rating Justification
To verify this claim, we reviewed data from the U.S. Department of State’s website, specifically focusing on B-visa refusal rates for nonimmigrants by nationality from 2023 to 2024.
Under U.S. immigration law, a visa refusal occurs when an applicant is formally denied a nonimmigrant visa for failing to meet the eligibility criteria of the visa category or due to other grounds of ineligibility.
For Fiscal Year 2024, the adjusted refusal rate for Liberia was 79.38%, placing it among the countries with the highest refusal rates. In comparison, Laos had a slightly higher refusal rate of 82.8%.
A review of the FY2023 figures shows Liberia’s refusal rate at 78%. However, in that year, North Korea, Palau, and the Federated States of Micronesia each had a 100% refusal rate.
Conclusion
Based on a review of the available data on the U.S. Department of State’s website, we conclude that Cllr. Yeakula-Korkpor’s claim that Liberia has a 79% U.S. visa refusal rate, which is one of the highest in the world, is correct.
In FY2024, Liberia’s U.S. Visa refusal rate was 79.38%, one of the highest in the world.
