Gotabaya Rajapaksa Apps For Green Card: Former Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa is waiting to get a ‘US Green Card’ to return to the US and settle there with his wife and son. Rajapaksa fled the country last month amid widespread anti-government protests in Sri Lanka demanding his resignation.
Process started last month
The Sri Lankan newspaper Daily Mirror, quoting highly placed sources, claimed that Rajapaksa’s lawyers in the US had started the process for getting the green card only last month. Being a US citizen of his wife Loma Rajapaksa, the former president is eligible to apply.
had given up US citizenship
Rajapaksa (73) had renounced his US citizenship to contest the presidential election in 2019. Rajapaksa took premature retirement from the Sri Lankan Army and went into the field of information technology. After this he went to America in 1998. He returned to Sri Lanka in 2005.
Currently living in Bangkok
According to the news, the former president is currently staying with his wife in a hotel in Bangkok and is due to return to Sri Lanka on August 25, canceling his initial plans to stay in Thailand till November. Officials in Bangkok have asked Rajapaksa to stay inside the hotel for security reasons.
Brother said Gotabaya will return to Sri Lanka
Former President Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s cousin Udayanga Veeratunga said on Wednesday that Rajapaksa would return to Sri Lanka. Weeratunga, who was Sri Lanka’s ambassador to Russia from 2006 to 2015, said, “He spoke to me on the phone, I can tell you that he will return to the country next week.”
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