Ari

The moral of the story seems to be that abuses of the VWP will not be tolerated by DHS and if you want to visit the United States for more than a brief B1/B2 stay, you need to get a visa rather than show up and lie about your intentions.

GUWonder

Because Australian consular officials may provide advice on such matters or are thought to perhaps provide advice/assistance on such matters.

Quite clearly you must not have spent significant time working or observing ACS at US Embassies or Consulates in Europe or you would know that some US citizens in Germany would go to the U.S. Embassy in Bern or otherwise seek consular assistance via ACS in Switzerland.

ACS = American Citizen Services.


To avoid/minimize overstaying and to get information or otherwise try to get regularized to return to being in compliance; in other words, the proverbial "to kill two birds with one stone".

NH isn't so far from Canada. It borders Canada.

That is not the only scenario that makes sense, even as it may be the only scenario of which you know that makes sense to you.

The tales of what ACS faces when dealing with US citizens are legend. I'm sure the Australian equivalent of ACS has its own equivalent.

GUWonder

Did she lie about her intentions? While CBP may have assumed/concluded she was engaged in a lie about the nature of her trip, I am not sure she did.

mre5765

Agreed, the outcome would be different.

But it wasn't different because she took advice from a non-lawyer: a law enforcement officer in cahoots with his colleagues on the other side of the border. The CBSA officer knew what was going to happen. It's shameful that he did this, even more so that he did this to a kid and a fellow CommonWealth citizen.

Cops lie. She was naive. Now she knows better.

Ari

It seems like she met a guy overseas, followed him here with vague plans to spend an indeterminate amount of time here with him before possibly getting married and, at some point, decided to go on a 5-year bus trip; that doesn't fall under the VWP.

http://www.nhregister.com/lifestyle/...ration-trouble

cdn1

Did the Australian Govt or Consular officials try to ease her problems at all after the arrest and detention ?

All these countries wanna cooperate and help each other to catch the bad guys and facilitate travelers yet they don't miss a chance to take a shot at an Australian girl. So what if she overstayed? What happened to the commonwealth and being from a western country, and all?

If each country is going to treat all foreigners like this, then why all the fuss and focus on "increased cooperations" everywhere?

GUWonder

I'm not so sure the CBSA lied to her or that she took the bait of a lying CBSA employee. For life's hiccups that involve barely missing the stay deadline due to travel delays or illness, there are procedures that allow for such things to not necessarily be held against a person who used the VWP to enter the US.

But did she lie about her intentions? I wouldn't jump to the conclusion that she lied about her intentions. The VWP doesn't prohibit meeting and following a romantic interest and having vague plans subject to change that may include possibly getting married. The VWP does prohibit other things.

Leaving the U.S. -- after entry on the VWP -- due to a change of plans that require a change of status (so as not to avoid violating VWP conditions), and then return to the U.S. by not using the VWP seems to be what she was seeking to do.

She seemed to have been making a deliberate effort to try to comply with the terms applicable to her stay under the VWP.

Kagehitokiri

they do this when they dont detain or deport illegals?

travelinmanS

A massive overreaction. They could have simply banned her from re-entering the USA and told her to enter Canada and never come back to the USA as she had overstayed and was no longer welcome. What's the point of holding her in jail like a common criminal for 21 days? Disgusting.

GUWonder

It's definitely what I would call a disgusting waste of resources derived of an overreaction by DHS and of the logistical constrains that are a result of not wasting resources. An interesting mix to say the least.

At the northern border land crossings, removals from the U.S. of non-admissible, non-Canadian persons takes much longer than at many major US airports of entry. Part of it is the logistics of holding the person, planning the transport, and finally getting the person to an airport for the flights out.

A typical Schengen Zone citizen, for example, denied entry to the U.S. at JFK or EWR due to attempt to misuse VWP is back on the ground in Europe within less than 72 hours -- usually substantially less than 72 hours. It's just easier to get the airlines to fly them out of the airport when they are already so close to the gate for the international flights "back home".

Blogndog

I have overstayed visas many times in many countries. The penalty is typically having to pay a fine of 5 or 10 dollars per day of overstay. The only "lesson" she has learned is that the worlds only hyperpower is governed by lunatics.

Blogndog

lot of misguided conjecture here. what she did was perfectly logical , she just did it a few hours too late. and everyone does "visa runs", why the insinuations that there is something nefarious about "re-setting the clock"?

Xyzzy

There isn't anything generally nefarious about it but the US government doesn't like it and in this case travel to Canada does NT reset it.