John Aldeborgh

It seems to me that anyone who gets on an airplane and flies to a foreign country needs to be prepared for not being allowed to enter. I have both a good friend and a cousin that at different times, over the past 20 years have landed at JFK and been refused entry, both non-citizens. Both were sent back the city they departed from, at the airlines expense. I have been stuck in quarantine in Taiwan, during the bird flu crisis, a number of years ago, for 4 hours and was very lucky I wasn't sent back to SFO; I had been in China 9 days and 20 hours earlier and there was a 10 day rule in place. My point is daily there are people attempting to enter the US that are turned away, I'm sure these individuals are and will be handled in a similar fashion. Why the airport staff or airlines should be confused makes no sense, there are well established regular and ongoing processes for handling individuals that are refused entry. IMHO, anyone that is shocked or caught off guard by a sudden rule change obviously has never worked in the private sector where sudden and dramatic changes in policy are a regular occurance.

BTW, the US has a long history of stoping peoples from specific countries from entering the US, the last time was 2012 and the country was Syria, that stay was for 6 months. Jimmy Carter did the same with Iran during his administration. I won't even discuss FDR and the Japanese from 1942-1945.

PTravel

Coincidentally, my cousin called me about this yesterday. I just helped him through the process of getting a K-1 visa for his fiancee. She is a Filipina who resides in Taiwan. She'll be flying from Taiwan to Portland via Vancouver, and my cousin wanted to know if there will be any problems. I told him that I didn't know. The Vancouver POE is a concern If, for some reason, she's denied entry to the US, she's only transiting Canada; though I suspect Canada would allow her in, I don't know this for certain. She has also turned in here Taiwan residency permit as part of this process, so I don't know whether returning to Taiwan is even possible for her. Also, if this was a POE in the US, as a lawyer, I could probably do something, even if it entailed getting a writ of mandate from a federal judge. I'm not at all clear, however, how and where to get a mandamus for a US POE that is on Canadian soil. I told him that, as a non-Muslim from a non-Muslim-majority country who is residing in another non-Muslim-majority country, there probably wouldn't be an issue, but that this was political judgment, rather than a legal one. However, I also told him that I would call the ACLU a week or so before her arrival, see what advice they had and, if necessary, I'll go up to Vancouver and intervene should the situation require it.

The President has implied that the current situation will continue for 90 days and, from what I've read, my cousin's fiancee isn't in the class of persons who are impacted by the executive order. However, things seem to be changing by the minute, so who knows?

pinniped

OK, that's part of the answer: it sounds like you're saying that the passengers are required to fly their itin in exact reverse - no routing changes. So if the person went Yemen-ADD-CDG-JFK, they must go back through France and Ethiopia.

But the other part of my question is: are any of those countries along the way making special exception to allow the refugee to stop flying and enter that country. So the {government} may have bought you a JFK-CDG-ADD-Whatever ticket, but France says "You can get off in Paris and enter France." (I haven't heard any of the people actually flying through France...it's just an example.)

In your example, Canada, I guess it begs another question: are/were any of these people stuck at YUL or YYZ with nowhere to go? If they flew in from the Middle East and were rejected by U.S. CBP in a Canadian airport, would the Canadians allow them to stay?

I guess in theory, yes. But if you've followed a long process and been specifically granted entry to a country after extensive vetting, as these people had been, these people should have been let in. They followed the rules. If we didn't have a mostly-untrained clueless boob in the White House, they would have been let in: even if a competent administration was enacting plans to tighten future immigration.

Airline's expense? That's done when the airline made an error and shouldn't have boarded you. In that case, the U.S. government's position is that your friend and cousin weren't admissible for some reason they (and the airline) probably should have known about. What exactly happened?

Airlines have a system they follow carefully to determine how to document-check international travelers. In this case, a hastily-written and apparently un-proofread Executive Order was issued that even government employees had a hard time figuring out, as evidenced by the conflicting guidance issued by them to airlines. So I can easily see how the airlines were confused.

I don't know...I don't do business with many companies that randomly enact asinine policies of a deranged and/or incompetent CEO without any notice or guidance as to how employees are to enact them. If those companies exist, they probably aren't successful. This type of behavior isn't the hallmark of a professionally-run, stable, thoughtful organization.

Even when companies enact changes I don't like, my business in process with them can usually complete unimpacted and I have time to decide whether I want to keep doing business with them.

It'd be as if the {government} ran an airline today and tried to ban all non-white travelers with 20 minutes' notice, but gave counter agents and GAs no further guidance on whether it applied to people already on planes, people checked in, people who bought tickets before the ban, etc.

catocony

Here's what CIC says:

Nationals from the following countries qualify for the Transit Without Visa (TWOV) program:

Indonesia
Thailand
Taiwan
Taiwan passport holders who do not qualify for the visa exemption to visit Canada may still benefit from the TWOV program
Philippines

All nationals who qualify for the TWOV program must also meet these conditions:

They hold a valid passport or travel document issued by the country of which they are a citizen;
They hold a valid United States (U.S.) visa;
They travel to Canada on an approved airline (Air Canada, Air Canada Rouge, Air China, WestJet, Cathay Pacific, Philippines Airlines, China Southern, Jazz Air, Sky Regional Airlines Inc., Air Georgian, and Hainan Airlines); and
They transit through an approved Canadian airport (Vancouver International Airport, Calgary International Airport or Toronto’s Pearson International Airport, Terminal 1 only). A change of terminal between flights in Toronto’s Pearson International Airport does not qualify as a condition of the TWOV program.

So it sound like if she's turned away at ICE pre-clearance in Vancouver, the Canadians will put her on the first plane back to Taiwan. The PI isn't on {the} list of countries at the moment, but who knows what he'll do next.

WineCountryUA

As this thread is generic and not airline specific, will move it to the Travel Safety & Security, Checkpoints and Borders Policy Debate forum where discussions like this better fit.

WineCountryUA
UA coModerator

PTravel

This is what I suspected, though Canada has been quite flexible in accommodating people caught in the ramifications of the President's executive order. The problem is, I don't know whether Taiwan would accept her, as she no longer has a residence permit. Sounds like the plot from The Terminal, doesn't it?

Maybe I'll suggest to my cousin that she change her travel plans to come through Los Angeles, rather than Vancouver.

pinniped

When you transit Canada to get to the U.S., do you ever enter Canada?

I've done this twice in the past 10 years and once I remember it one way, once the other. YYC: I could have sworn we went landside, had lunch outside security, and then walked to the other end of the terminal to do U.S. immigration. YYZ: it felt like we were herded straight through to U.S. immigration - we didn't wander out into the landside area of the airport, although we obviously had to go through a U.S. TSA checkpoint in addition to everything else.

Am I misremembering one of these?

I have flown in/out of YYZ many times O&D. I know I was in a different queue than the one time I connected.

GUWonder

The VWP was also impacted. The dual-citizens of VWP countries and blacklisted countries already couldn't use the VWP, but after (and due to) last week's EO these visitors couldn't get new US visas or use existing, unexpired US visas procured days, weeks or months ago to complete travel this past weekend or this week.

US CBP's IAP has people assigned to work a number of international hub airports with lots of US-bound flights. Countries have allowed the US to do this. Perhaps this situation will get some countries to tell the US DHS to leave and go pound sand in someone else's playground. But I doubt that it's going to happen anytime soon.

John Aldeborgh

I understand that you don't agree with or apparently like the current administration but it's not optional or the point of the thread. Our immigration department has been here before, they are professionals and the processes exist for how to handle the effected individuals. The few people that have been caught up in the sudden transition have potentially been unnecessarily inconvenienced but the government unnecessarily inconveniences many people every day. The real work begins now as the immigration department needs to develop the 'extreme vetting' systems and procedures in the next 90 days. Everyone who travels overseas needs to do their homework, I'm sure there's more coming so we all need to stay awake.

GUWonder

When even US DHS, State and DOJ senior staff weren't clear on what was allowed and not under the EO, and when the messages even to charges d'affaires were not properly designed and delivered in advance of CBP being told to do what it did and not being wholly consistent across all flights and ports of exit to and entry for US, then it's to be expected that airlines and airport staff were confused about what to do.

Well-managed private sector firms have such incompetent policy-making and policy-implementation as this taking place with no accountability for the decision makers and operational leadership putting in a change? This is the kind of stuff that gets people fired or finding scapegoats to blame and avoid responsibility/accountability.

Facts matter:

All that was done to disrupt travel these past few days was not done in 2012.

Syrians and Iranians have been entering the US in each and every month in 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015 and 2016.

Iranians were legally entering the US in each and every month in 1977, 1978, 1979, 1980 and 1981.

Elements of the body law applicable in the 1940s is not all legal now.

dinoscool3

If transiting from an international destination to the US, and the airline automatically transfers the bags over, you don't enter Canada. You get shuttled straight through to US pre-clearance.

pinniped

Professionals? This past weekend was either (a) the very definition of amateur hour, with the entire government apparatus looking every bit as incompetent and confused as its leader, or (b) a shrewd loyalty test to determine which individuals in DHS/CBP were willing to behave illegally, proving greater loyalty to Trump than to the Constitution and the rule of law.

reclusive46

That wasn't the case in YYC until the new terminal opened. You had to pick up your bags, drag them to preclearance and recheck them in.

dinoscool3

Thats why I added the part about if the bags were transferred by the airline. Not every airport/airline has that set up. Although I could have made it clearer.