Originally Posted by
warakorn
The advantage of pre-clearance in Dublin is that US immigration can deny you without actually formally denying you.
The guy had no ticket leaving the North American continent. Thats a clear case of not granting access to the US via the Visa Waiver Program.
Actually, the airline should have denied him issueing boarding cards without an onward ticket. He should not have gotten to the US immigration guys in the first place.
"Formal" or not, I am betting there will be a record of it. A friend of mine discovered this the hard way, when exiting Canada to become a landed immigrant - you have to leave the country, and the easiest and cheapest way for many is walking over the bridge at Niagara Falls, turning around, and re-entering Canada. If you walk over, and choose not to enter the US, instead going straight back to Canada, it is marked down as a refused entrance (no paperwork, nothing in the passport etc. just on their computers). They were not really in the big scheme of things denied (they could easily have gone for a walk around the park on that side, then come back, for example) but didn't know any better. It still comes up years later, and they have to answer 'yes' to "have you ever been denied entry to the US" (but luckily can explain exactly why, and hasn't been a further issue).