US visa hopes for ice cream family melts
September 01 2009 by Mark Johnstone
US visa row splits UK family
A British family who moved to the US two years ago and built an ice cream business have had their visa application rejected, leaving one half of the family in the US and the other half in the UK.
The McKnights relocated to Florida from Kilmarnock, Scotland in 2007.
Mrs McKnight and daughter Samantha recently returned to the UK to renew their US visa papers for what she thought would be a routine procedure.
But US immigration turned down their application, leaving them a continent apart from husband Andrew and sons Robert, 21, and Paul, 18.
The family claim their US visas were extended by immigration officials in the US until 2011, but officials in UK said the family’s ice-cream franchise business was not profitable enough to warrant a new visa. They said the business lost $30,000 last year.
To qualify for a US visa a business must provide an economic benefit to the local community in which it serves and should contribute financially to more than just the investing family.
The ex-pat family have been split apart since June and they claim the mix-up is due to an accounting error that overshadowed the fact that their business actually made a profit in 2008 of $20,000.
Mr McKnight says: “It’s tearing us apart.”
The McKnight family are making a new US visa application.
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