I made a mistake filling out the ESTA, I was traveling for a job interview and ticked the box saying that I was seeking to work in the US, big mistake, instant denial.<p>There is no one you can talk to, no way to expedite any remediation, and you can't travel to the US by boat or plane to talk to the CBP.<p>What I ended up doing, and I don't necessarily recommend this, is flew to Canada and entered over the land border.<p>After spending something like an hour at the border, and holding up my bus, they let me in.<p>Supposedly I should be able to apply for an ESTA in the future, but it's not something I have tried since.<p>I didn't get the job.
I think US citizens should lose the Visa-free travel arrangements in most countries. It's supposed to be reciprocal but the ESTA is a Visa, it walks, talks and quacks like one. If it's denied, there's no real recourse and the process is completely opaque...<p>Obviously, it's not in the interest of most countries to do that but it's really infuriating how something like ESTA was created to abuse the spirit of the reciprocal visa free agreements while sticking to the letter of the agreements.
This is grim and might portend reciprocal issues.<p>I had missed that the ETIAS start date has been pushed back to end of 2022.<p>As an American citizen I've taken it for granted that I can book a flight to Germany when a $200 mistake fare comes up and fly, like, within 24 hours, with no immigration preapproval required. I'm not going understand how much I miss that until it's gone.<p>Hard to imagine there <i>won't</i> be bureaucratic snafus where Americans are inexplicably denied an ETIAS and will expect to apply for a paper tourist visa to visit Europe, weeks or months in advance of travel.
> I switched approach and instead applied for a tourist visa. I paid 160 USD, filled in a ridiculous amount of information about me and my past travels over the last 15 years and I visited the US embassy for an in-person interview and fingerprinting.<p>Imagine repeat this process every year... as an international student.
What exactly are they doing when they put your application in "administrative processing" for years with no explanation or time estimate? What could possibly take years to process on a standard visa application? Does anyone know?
Nightmare fuel. My partner is trying to get a visitor's visa to come to the US with me. I pay taxes to my government so that my government can keep my partner from visiting me. It's a great system.
I would love to know what's actually happening in these situations. Is there just a backlog of PDFs sitting on some server and there's only 2 guys going through it? Is there a command from Washington to only process N visas per day? What's literally happening here?
This reminds me of the articles I read about COVID-19 tests that took 19 days for results to come back. If it takes that long to get results back, the results are pretty much useless. Sure, in the end he got a visa, but his original travel plans are long gone.<p>If the backlog is so long, there should be a lottery system to ensure that at least some results are timely. Alas, government processes rarely have any logic applied.
A tourism visa does not allow work in the US. He really shouldn't head to an all hands meeting on a tourist visa. The CBP officer will ask his purpose of travel and he'll have to lie about it, after putting it in public writing. This is a mess that he should fix ASAP.
As a third world citizen, where we always have to apply for US visa to visit, this is highly unusual.<p>In most of the cases we are informed during the in person interview of approval or denial, in case of approval, we have our visas stamped within a month.
This happened to me as well, but I "only" had to wait a year (and it only got fixed once we got a US Senator involved). Full story here: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23942466" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23942466</a>
Sounds properly kafkaesque. Being stuck in bureaucracy is my 2nd biggest realistic fear. (after dying while riding my bike in the US)<p>It appears as though getting the congressperson involved might've helped. It is nice to see that people can actually get in touch with their congressperson here in the US. A sign that democracy does somewhat work as intended.<p>Anecdotally, since Trump took office, the processing times for visa/EAD went up by 50%-ish in my peer group. Visa rejections for H1B also went up hugely among those who appear super qualified. 2 Friends' H1b was rejected for Data Science roles at a FANG despite having a CS/Comp Math major from Stanford and another having studied Information systems at another top 10 US-CS school.
I visited the US 12 times if I count correctly. It was nice, but I seriously hope I'll never be tempted again. How deep can you sink to deal with such a defunct state? Others deserve my money more. If you travel often it's inevitable that some day you fill in some contradicting details just because you don't remember everything, you make a stupid mistake or you interpret some field differently than a couple of years ago. Their algorithms will conclude you are giving false information and the result can be seen in this blog post.
Reading this made me glad to be Canadian as we are the only nation that doesn't require visas to enter the United States.<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visa_requirements_for_Canadian_citizens#Visa_requirements_map" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visa_requirements_for_Canadian...</a>
While the US visa is $160, it means you get to save on a pile of $14 ESTA applications :)<p>I’m not 100% sure how this works, but when OP renews their passport, they might need to <i>keep</i> their old passport because the visa is still valid, ie: travel with old and new passport. Not sure if the US works that way.
You did not run in trouble with<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visa_Waiver_Program#Visa_Waiver_Program_restrictions" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visa_Waiver_Program#Visa_Waive...</a><p>right? If you are going to work meetings it seems that should be OK.
This is very strange. In Israel all citizens are required to issue a tourist visa before traveling to the US. The process is super quick. The embassy have a website that updates you on each step in the process and from applying until you get the actual visa it can take only 3 weeks. The only busy times are usually in summer months where many tourists want to issue visas, so waiting for the in person interview can be up to a month. But again, from the interview to getting the actual the visa is a matter of days.
It seems to me that you got rejected because you applied for a tourist VISA, but your travels were business related. In that case I think you should have applied for a business VISA instead.
Nonetheless, what happened is quite upsetting. I am not sure if I ever go to the US given how they treat tourists. For me it's not worth to be degraded in such a way only to see things that probably exist or look similar in other countries.
> There’s no end in sight of the pandemic. I will of course not travel to the US or any other country until it can be deemed safe and sensible.<p>With the <i>"of course"</i> I am wondering if people are really concerned about being "COVID shamed"?<p>Aren't we at "rapid test and move on"? As in, take a test one to two days before you board a flight, take a test during or after your trip? Results in 18 - 48 hours? It is a far cry from the mess of unavailable tests and the infinite delays if you managed to get a test that was occurring back in Spring and Summer.<p>And no, some false negatives aren't a rebuttal. All public policy measures are to get the R0 below 1 on average. The rapid tests in conjunction with the already existing measures are good enough for that. All we are doing here is skipping the need for 14 day quarantines on arrival.<p>Granted, he is 50, and is more likely to consider himself an at risk group. I was still wondering what he really thinks.<p>It really depends on what you are optimizing for. If you are optimizing more for not getting it, nothing has changed. If you are optimizing more for not spreading it, a lot has changed.