The Visa Saga

March 22, 2024

As some of you might know, my season was cut short this year. In a recent Instagram post, I said that I was forced to leave Europe due to “Visa Complications,” but I thought I’d explain a little more about what happened this season.

First, as a bit of background, if you are an American you can only stay in Europe for 90 days without a visa. The US Nordic Combined Team has a new partnership with the Norwegian Federation which means that all our coaches, and most of our resources, are in Norway, so we as a team base there during the fall and winter months. Even to compete every weekend from the end of November through March, necessitates staying more than 90 days in Europe, so adding the entire pre-season means a visa is 100% required for US athletes. In the past, USA Nordic employed many Slovenian coaches, so we have always used Slovenian visas. This year, with the transition to the Norwegian partnership, we no longer had Slovenian coaches, but it was presumed that the Slovenian Embassy would still grant us visas.

Sometimes ski racing is the hardest part of the season, sometimes it’s jumping. Other years it’s a fight just getting to the starting line. If this year has taught me anything, it’s that you should never take the starting line for granted. Be grateful for every competition and race your hardest no matter how it goes! What follows is my crazy saga trying to get a visa, just to get to the starting line. 

July

During the annual Springer Tournee competition in Park City, Utah national team athletes put their name on a list for a Schengen. I had a permanent resident visa already in process in Norway, a special visa you could apply for after living in Norway for three years, but decided to put my name on the list as a backup if the Norwegian visa was denied.

August

After returning to Lillehammer, I met with the Immigration Office about my Norwegian visa. I was informed that applicants had to have lived in Norway for three years with a non-student visa, so my application was denied. I had been in Norway since 2020, but with a student visa. That was a bummer, but at least I still had the other visa in the works as a backup.

October

I flew back to the US of A to compete at US National Championships in Lake Placid, New York. While in Lake Placid, I was given all the paperwork needed to apply for the Schengen Visa, but I was informed that the application had to be sent with a passport from your home address. I was planning on flying back to Norway after nationals, so I needed to get a new passport. As soon as I got back to Norway at the end of October, I went straight to the US Embassy in Oslo to apply for a duplicate passport. The application was approved, great success.

November

A couple weeks after I applied for the passport, it arrived in Lillehammer. I ran down to the post office, opened the package and put it right back into another envelope along with my visa application and paperwork to send all the way across the world to my parents in Anchorage, Alaska.  Fingers crossed they wouldn’t lose that envelope! It took two and a half weeks, but finally my mom got the package in mid-November. Then she did the exact same thing I did: pulled out the passport and paperwork and sent it to the embassy in Washington, DC. We were told it was a three-week turnaround, and I could rest easy knowing it would be approved before the end of December.

December

In mid-December, I flew home for Christmas. Over the phone, the case worker at the embassy told me that processing was taking longer than usual due to, among other things, an influx of immigrants into Slovenia. I told him I was leaving on January 6th and needed my visa by then, and he assured me it would come. Unfortunately, January 4th rolled around, and the visa still hadn’t been approved. The case worker told me that I was allowed to go back to Europe as long as I had a visa in process, and that he would send my passport back from DC. He said once I was back in Lillehammer, and the visa was accepted, I could send my passport to Ljubljana, Slovenia to stamp in the visa. Once again, he assured me that it would be approved it was just a waiting game. If you’ve been following along, you’ll realize that my passport is doing an awful lot of traveling, but just to help visualize how crazy this process was, here is a map of my passport’s travel up to this point.

January

After changing my flight while waiting for the passport to arrive from DC, I finally was able to fly back to Norway just in time for the Trondheim Continental Cup (COC). I had planned to go back earlier to train and get over jetlag, but had to change plans because of wait-time on my passport. Unfortunately, the day I got to Norway, I got an email from the embassy that my visa had been denied. Denied because of questions with our agreement and because more people applied than were on the list. I was shocked because 24 hours earlier the embassy had told me that it was going to be approved and that I could travel. Here I was in Norway with no visa, and my days running low. I immediately contacted the sports director who put me in touch with the legal team at US Ski and Snowboard. We knew we had to contact the Norwegian Immigration Office, inform them of the situation, and now that I was in Norway, apply for a Norwegian sports visa. Unfortunately, I was already en route to Trondheim so the visa would have to wait a couple days. I had a great time at the Trondheim COC with my teammates, but the visa issue loomed in the background.

As soon as I got back to Lillehammer a couple days later, I finished all the paperwork and booked the first available appointment with the immigration office. Unfortunately, there were no appointments until the end of the week, when I would be out of days. To make matters worse, I was supposed to travel to Germany on Wednesday to compete at a COC in Klingenthal, and the cargo van with all my gear was already on its way. On Tuesday night, 12 hours before my flight to Germany, I got a call that I shouldn’t travel out of Norway until I had the visa issue sorted out. That was a bummer of a phone call to get the night before a red eye flight with all your bags packed and gear already gone. Ironically, everything but me was at that COC, even though I didn’t make it to Germany, my skis and all my gear did.

At the end of the week, one of my amazing coaches from my club in Norway, accompanied me to my appointment at the Immigration Office. The case worker I talked to was super friendly and helpful. I told him the full story, trying to be as forthcoming as possible, and gave him my application along with signed letters from US Ski and Snowboard as well as the sports director of USA Nordic Sport. The case worker said that the paperwork all looked good and accepted my visa application for processing, but said that he would have to talk with an expert about the situation because I was over my 90 days. He said that it should be fine though because I was only over my days due to an unexpected denial of the other visa and because I was forthcoming with the Norwegian immigration office as soon as I found out. He said he would email me in 48 hours about their decision. If they agreed to accept the visa into processing, it could take months to approve but I could stay in Norway. On the flip side, if they denied it, I would have to leave Norway, and Europe, until I had been issued a new visa. This can take three to six months when applying from the US, effectively ending my season.

Those 48 hours were stressful to stay the least, but two days later, there was an email in my inbox from the immigration office. I held my breath and opened the email. The tone was cold and blunt. It said because I had a unique situation, and was forthcoming with the authorities, that they would not move forward with deportation proceedings… as long as I sent them confirmation of a flight ticket, showing that I was leaving Europe ASAP. If I failed to do so, deportation proceedings would be followed. I called my parents who picked up immediately (despite it being 1am) and told them the news. They knew how much work had gone into this season and how important the upcoming competitions were, so we took a minute to soak in the news.

My mom was able to book me a ticket on a flight leaving three days later, and I sent the confirmation ticket to the case worker. He gave me the thumbs up that no legal action would be taken, and I began packing my bags.

So that was the visa saga. Since July of 2023, I did everything I could to get a visa. Seven months and three denied visas later, I’m back home in Alaska. It was a roller coaster of a year to say the least, but at least I learned my lesson for next year. I have a plan for future visas, so this never happens again, but I’m honestly still shocked that it happened at all.

I am not the first athlete to come home mid-season due to visa issues, and I won’t be the last, but I hope this story can help warn future athletes of the lengthy and difficult process. This is a problem that is unique to non-European athletes. Athletes from Europe do not need to worry about visas because most competitions take place in Europe where they can travel freely. On top of significantly higher travel and costs, athletes from outside Europe also must worry if they’ll even be allowed into the country.  Visas are another hurdle that non-European athletes must go through just to get to the starting line. But one thing I’ve learned about hurdles is that they are made for jumping over.  You might hit a couple head-on, but every hurdle you do clear, makes you better prepared for the next one.