Popular Support Helps Fa\'avae Get to Primal Quest
Rob / 24.08.2004
“It just goes to show that never giving up on things normally pays off.†That’s how Nathan Fa\'avae finished an open email thanking all those who’d supported him in his successful fight to be allowed entry into the USA so he can compete in Primal Quest in September.We’d previously reported that he’d been repatriated and told he could not get a visa to enter the country without an arrest waiver after getting a $50 fine for taking a banner at a U.S. mountain biking race in 1995. Things looked bleak, but the ‘never give up’ attitude that helps make the Team Seagate.com captain a winner, and the fact he is such a popular and high profile athlete, has helped him win his case.
Here’s what he had to say;
Firstly, thanks so much for all your help, the support I got from everybody and also the support people rallied up from their contacts, meant that the US Consulate were under an avalanche of letters, phone calls from print, TV and Radio media. They got calls from many high level business people, police, MP\'s, top NZ athletes, and lots of highly recognised NZ people, including Helen Clark.
The result was they phoned me a few days into my \'making a point\' campaign and wanted to help me, to keep me quiet. I guess that’s a bonus of being in NZ, if I was in some countries I probably would just have mysteriously disappeared.
All I needed to do to get a Visa to enter USA was get copies of my court records to validate my story. All they knew I was convicted of petty theft.
Seagate lawyers retrieved my court records only to discover that I was not convicted for Petty Theft at all!, I was convicted of an infraction, which is not considered serious enough to need a Visa to enter USA. This means I should never have been refused entry and I technically do not need a waiver to enter USA.
