So let’s say you arrive in a country and find out that for whatever reason, your visa is no good or the officials just plain aren’t interested in letting you in. What happens? Do they keep you at the airport until the next flight to your home country? Do they ship you? Who foots the bill? When you get back to your own country will anyone care that you were deported from somewhere? (I mean would it go on any kind of local record?)
Well, I believe (but am certainly not an immigration lawyer, just a layperson who’s had to deal with a few immigration issues) that deportation refers to a person who has either been admitted legally but committed some serious crime, or to someone who has, in the USA at least, “Entered Without Inspection” by a CBP officer.
That’s an important aside, actually - even someone who would otherwise be admissible to the USA would be an illegal immigrant if they didn’t submit to CBP inspection on arrival.
Right well, if you simply show up at a US airport without valid visas or without being eligible for temporary admission under the visa waiver program, you will be sent away. This isn’t “deportation”, though, it’s simply being “refused admission”. From what I have heard, you will be held in something resembling a jail cell until a plane (or ship or whatever) is available to take you back to your origin port outside the USA.
Who pays? Most western countries have laws obliging any carrier who brings in an inadmissible person to be responsible for taking them back to their port of origin. So in theory, the carrier pays under these circumstances, although I know from personal experience (well, my wife’s personal experience in the UK) that they won’t be happy about it.
My wife was refused admission to the UK (she is a US citizen, I am British). They “paroled” her into the UK for six days, on condition that she left on a specified United Airlines flight back to Dulles, and that she remained contactable at my UK address during those six days. The UK immigration officers also held her passport until she departed. Boy, have we learned a lot about immigration law since those naive days.
I have no idea how it works for, say, a person who is an LPR (Lawful Permanent Resident - a greencard holder) of the US but who then commits a serious crime and is to be deported back to their homeland. I’d take a WAG that such a person, after serving any jail sentence, will be escorted to an airport by LEOs of some kind. No idea who pays in this case. I have ideas, but one WAG per GQ post is more than enough 
Oh, and you asked if anyone in your home country would care. I suppose this depends on local laws, but I can say that in the UK and the USA at least, the basic answer is “No”. Well, assuming that you were simply refused admission - if you were deported because of a crime you committed, your home country’s law enforcement types might be interested to see if they had any jurisdiction. One example of this would be the UK laws against travelling abroad to solicit sex with minors. Even though the crime is committed abroad (most commonly in Thailand), a UK citizen can still be prosecuted for this in the UK.
It’s not, however, a crime to simply present yourself to a CBP officer in the USA, request admission, and be told “No.”
When my wife returned to the USA after being refused admission to the UK, no-one in the US gave her any trouble. She presented her US passport to the CBP officer at Dulles, was asked where she had been and why, and was then stamped back in to the USA and was on her way.
My cousin’s an immigration Garda at Dublin airport and has several broken wrists to prove it (from fractious deportees resisting while handcuffed to him).
He tells me that the person is always sent back to their last port of call, accompanied by two rozzers and usually in First Class - I presume because that is all you can get at short notice. Unfortunately, even though the state buys return First Class tickets, the rozzers must always come back in economy.
He frequently has to accompany deportees to various European airports, although very rarely a British one (although he did fetch up in Heathrow once, about 8 years ago). On one occasion, he and a colleague had to go all the way to Johannesburg.
Heh, in my wife’s case at Heathrow, the economy cabin was full. So they bumped someone else to First and gave her that person’s seat in economy. Since she wasn’t paying a fare, she was understandably low on their list of priorities.
I don’t believe that the UK government actually paid United either, because UK law made United liable for bringing in an illegal foreigner.
There are a couple of separate questions here, based on definition. Deportation, and refused admission.
To address the latter first, generally an airline will not let you board the flight if they determine that you will not be admitted to the country you’re traveling to, because, yes, they’re on the hook for your flight back. That’s why they check your passport and visa stuff at checkin.
Deportation, on the other hand refers to someone who has been declared “undesirable” by the country that they’re currently in. At least here, Canada for what it’s worth, there are two classes of deportees. Escorted, and unescorted. The unescorted ones are given a ticket and expected to be on the flight back home that has been bought for them. Escorted deportees have an officer (or two in some cases), from CBSA (Canada Border Security Agency) or CIC (Citizenship and Immigration Canada) accompany them on the flight. Sometimes it’s just an escort to make sure they get to where we’re sending them, sometimes, they’re shackled (and must be seated in the back row between the escorts). The escorts usually travel back home in business class, since they just do a turn around at destination. The fun really starts with unescorted deportees who have to connect flights in another country. We’ve had some people who were shipped back to African countries scarper in Amsterdam and other European cities.
This does get expensive, since one way international flights don’t come cheap. Hence the refusing admission, preferably at country of origin.
In my case I flew from the US to Brazil and my travel agent didn’t tell me I needed a visa :eek: and the airline didn’t check for a visa when I checked into the flight :smack:
When I arrived in Brazil the airline realized what had happened and hustled me into a back office while they tried to figure out what to do. There is apparently a $10,000 fine for the airline if anybody found out I had arrived illegally. They wanted to send me back to the US, but I needed to be in Brazil for important business meetings.
The airline knew the only way to fix this was to get me to a Brazilian Embassy somewhere so I could get a visa and they booked me on the next flight to Montevideo, Paraguay. It was a Sunday so they put me up at a hotel near the embassy and I had to go first thing on Monday morning and apply for a visa. After a few hours I had the visa and the airline then booked a flight for me back to Brazil from Paraguay.
So I lost a day, and the airline had to eat some cost, but it was better than getting hit with a $10K fine. Since that time I have always been checked for a visa if I was flying to somewhere that required one. BTW, the airline was American Airlines.
Steve
I arrived in Taiwan once with less than 6 months on my US passport. Normally, there is a visa-waver program, which no visa is required, but the person must be valid for at least 6 months. Taiwan allows you to obtain a visa at the airport, but charges dearly for the convenience.
That’s one reason the US has PFIs (Pre-Flight Inspection) at many ports, most notably in Canada and the Carribean. Travelling from, say, Vancouver to Chicago, one clears US immigration and customs before even getting on the plane. I believe the same is true of Dublin and Shannon, Ireland, but I’m not sure.
It’s easier to stop someone getting on a plane in the first place than it is to send them back after they arrive in the USA.
British and French immigration operates the same principle with the Channel Tunnel: one clears French authorities in London, and British authorities in Paris.
A former neighbor of mine was in the US illegally from Mexico. He was picked up early one Sunday morning and taken to a local INS detention facility. 3 days later he was on a bus heading with about 30 others heading south to Mexico. It took his legal wife about 6 months to get the paperwork in order for her husband to return to Washington.
Your former neighbour likely EWI’d - “Entered Without Inspection”. That’s the real crime of people who cross the Mexican border without permission from the CBP.
However, the US does allow its citizens to petition the Federal Government to allow their non-US-citizen spouses access to the USA. If one is married to a US citizen, certain immigration violations are forgiven - provided, of course, that the foreign citizen shows a desire to abide by the rules in future, and that the marriage is genuine. One example of a violation that can be forgiven is overstaying a visa or VWP admission. The key is intent: did that person, when he or she presented themselves to the CBP officer, actually intend something other than what they claimed? If so, they could be guilty of lying to an immigration officer. If not, they could be entitled to adjustment of status, up to and including a green card.
An alien who commits a crime, including EWI, may well be considered undesirable by the US authorities, and thus deported. In some circumstances, they can follow legal channels for re-admission, without prejudice. Blatant violations of US law, however, will not help their case when an officer of the State Department or DHS considers their application.
I knew an American this happened to. He flew from Bangkok to Hanoi about 10 years ago. When we saw him again the day after he flew out, he said – this was his story anyway – that the Vietnamese Immigration official told him he had a fake passport and could not enter the country. (This was not a Vietnamese-American, but a home-grown white-boy variety.) He said the official was not outraged or offended, but rather very matter-of-fact about it. He stayed in the airport hotel overnight at his own expense, and he flew back to Bangkok the next morning. He had a friend in Hanoi – a fellow American who was teaching English there – who was supposed to meet him at the airport. They even allowed him to speak with his friend in person, and his friend came under no official scrutiny.
After returning to Bangkok, he said to hell with the Third World for a while and took his vacation in Singapore instead.
We always found his story strange but could not figure out why he would make up such a thing. He was an oddball person anyway. This was about a decade ago when Vietnam was in the early stages of opening up and still finding its legs tourismwise. I’ve heard no similar story since.
so if a foreigner commits a crime, will he be deported and face his home country’s laws or detained for local punishment and then deported?
May I ask what the problem was? Were you married at the time? There is a TV show in Aus about border security, it mainly follows various passenger’s trials and tribulations dealing with Customs on entry to Australia. The most common mistake for normal people (i.e., not drug runners) seems to be turning up with no money which makes the authorities think you will have to work to support yourself, but you don’t have a work visa - oops. Another gotcha would be delcaring that you have no food and then it turning out that you have five suitcases filled with nothing BUT food (“oh but this stuff is in packets” :rolleyes:.) They don’t get sent back just fined for a false decleration and the food generally confiscated.
Also makes it a lot more convenient when I’m going to the states. Once I arrive I can just grab my bag and meet whoever is meeting me; they don’t have to wait for me to make it through customs. Also makes me less nervous clearing US customs when I am still physically on Canadian soil (no, I have no good reason to be nervous, I’m just a worry-wort).
The whole thing about it being the responsibility of the airline to check that you can enter the destination country or they have to take you back home must be difficult with visa waivers. The airline can only check that you satisfy the basic requirements.
When entering the US on a visa waiver, there are various things that can cause your entry to be blocked. One reason is if you’ve entered too often on the visa waiver. The airline wouldn’t necessarily know that. Your answers to certain questions can cause problems. “I’m going to visit my girlfriend” is never a good answer.
We weren’t married at the time. The immigration officers were very kind, but they simply didn’t believe that was only planning to enter for a two-week visit, since she had already spent 5 months in the UK that year.
They had a point. And while it was distressing at the time, it spurred me on to do some research into legal ways we could be together.
Indeed, though telling blatant lies is not a good strategy either. There’s no actual upper limit on VWP admissions, but if the officer thinks that you’re using the program to evade other visa requirements he or she will likely refuse admission.
The officer is obliged to assume everyone seeking entry to the USA has immigrant intent, and it’s up to the visitor to prove otherwise. If you’re travelling with your wife and two small kids, touting weekly passes for Disneyland, you probably won’t have too much trouble. But if,like me, your’re a youngish man travelling alone, well, it can be more difficult.
Once, at Detroit, I was specifically asked if I intended to marry a citizen. I could quite truthfully answer “No” to that, though I’m always careful not to elaborate. Basically, I didn’t want to answer any question that hadn’t been asked, though I would never be so stupid as to lie about something.
One girl I used to work with ran into this problem- she went to the US on holiday, and loved it so much that as soon as she got back she saved up and was back on a plane within 2 months. As soon as she arrived at LAX, the immigration people basically said “Are you sure you’re only visiting on holiday?” and took her into the Small Windowless Room for a (professional and by the book) interview regarding her intentions during her visit to the US.
After satisfying themselves that she was simply a somewhat impulsive young woman who liked the country so much she wanted to visit again as soon as she had the money, they sent her on her way, but she told me that their assumptions were that she was either A) Intending to work in the US, B) Had an American boyfriend that she was visiting, or C) Was running drugs (She wasn’t doing any of those, incidentally).
At the other end of the scale, the first time I visited France, the Customs & Immigration procedures at Boulogne consisted of the world’s most bored Gendarme sitting behind a desk reading a copy of Le Figaro or L’Express, who waved my Mum and I off without even looking up when we tried to show him our passports.
I’m sure things have changed since then, of course…
This sort of thing happened to me in '89. I had flown from NY to Heathrow to meet Lady Lacha, then just "The Girl, " and she was flying in from Dublin at the same time. Upon exiting the plane, they didn’t like the looks of me (and I don’t blame them), plus I didn’t have a return ticket, plus I had a good bit of cash on me. They were figuring that I was going to stay in the UK and work illegally. Truth was, we were planning on going to Ireland but maybe take a side-trip to Wales, so I didn’t know when or where I was going to be flying out from. Hence the extra cash: I wanted flexibility. Well, the English stopped me and grilled me and grilled me some more. I wasn’t allowed to go the bathroom without an escort, even. Then they said that they were going to take me to get my luggage. Yay! Actually, Boo – they were going to get my luggage and go through each and every bit of it. They found a two-year-old resume, and that made them even more suspicious (it was luggage I had used while in college; generating resumes was part of a lesson in electronically setting type). Plus, I had worked with a bunch of Irish girls that previous summer and had added them to my address book – and some of them lived in counties that bordered with Northern Ireland, and that got me into further hot water. They took me up to a detaining room, by which time The Girl had been located and was brought to see me – and the dam of her temper broke, and they ended up placing her in a different room (probably soundproofed). Her family had political connections, and it was only by grace of this fact I wasn’t placed on the next TWA flight heading back to NY. Instead, I was released (sans passport) and allowed to remain at large for two days. At that point, I had to go away – and if I wanted to go onto to Ireland, that was fine, but I’d have to fly out of UK airspace first. We ended up doing 12 hours in Paris, which was nice. There’s more to this story, but I’m tired of typing.