That’s really the question. It was inspired by the Discovery Channel show Match Me Abroad. On the TV show, various Americans travel to foreign countries to meet their partners, to varying success. This season, one woman from Mississippi met a man she likes from Morocco and a man from New Mexico met a woman in Czech Republic.
So, setting aside the whole “marry a foreigner” issue, how hard is it for people abroad to come visit the United States for no reason other than to hang out with a friend for a while. Assume the person is not a terrorist, has no criminal background, has a job in his/her home country, has family in his/her home country, and truly has no agenda other than to visit. This is just a regular person who has a friend in the United States and wants to visit. What if the regular person doesn’t have a friend and just wants to visit? How hard is it to enter the “Land of the Free?”
You go to the American embassy and apply for a tourist visa. If it is granted, you buy a plane ticket to what ever city you want to visit. Just don’t overstay your visa.
Yes, visiting the United States is easy[1]: just obtain a tourist visa, unless you do not need one.
ETA obtaining a visa on the basis of being the “partner” or spouse of a U.S. permanent resident is a thing, since you mentioned it, but IMHO is a bad idea for various reasons. In any case that would not be a normal tourist visa or work visa.
I think it depends on your personal situation and your country.
There are a set of countries where you don’t need a visa (the previously mentioned waiver program) and it is as simple as filling out an online form and showing up (I’m speculating a little bit, I’ve never done that for the US, but I did something similar visiting Australia on a US passport and that worked like that). I presume these countries are a combination of “economically equivalent” and geopolitically friendly.
I was extensively interviewed at the Cape Town US consulate before getting my US work visa, but that isn’t quite the same thing. I think the closest would be when my sister visited from South Africa to attend my US wedding. South Africa is very much on the “you need a visa” list. My recollection is that she also had to get interviewed at the consulate, and they were particularly interested in her showing local strong ties (documentation of home ownership, employment, etc.) that in their mind would discourage just not going back.
I do wonder at what point it’d cross from “doable with an irritating amount of paperwork and interrogation” to “unlikely to get approved”. If you work and live in a far less formal economy, where even if you have strong ties they’re harder to document, I can imagine it being very difficult to attend a friend’s wedding, plan the New York City vacation of your dreams, etc.
Well I dispute the qualification of being regular but it wasn’t difficult.
I have a passport and my ESTA application was approved in a bit over 24 hours. After that it’s just the matter of having the necessary cash to fund. Oh, and DHS likes you to provide a US address where they can contact you.
For countries that are in the visa waiver program, you will often not even have to wait 24 hours to get the ESTA approved; in case of low-risk travellers, it’s often an algorithm approving the application right after submission.
This is a requirement in most places for a tourist visa and is frankly bizarre most of the time for a tourist.
Do you write out a list of ten or more places you are staying? There is never room and the one time I asked about that, it was made very clear by the immigration official that I was asking hard questions they did not want to be bothered with and I was told something along the lines of “just put in the name of any place you are staying, that will be fine”. So I did even though I was staying there one night out of a couple of months in the States.
And the last time I entered the UK the form wanted “the place you are staying at which we can contact you” which was a contradiction since I could easily be contacted through my in-laws but wasn’t staying with them, and couldn’t easily be contacted through the places I was staying. I asked the immigration official which they would prefer and the angry response was “put the place you are staying at which you can be contacted while in the UK! Can’t you read?!” in a manner that clearly implied I was an idiot. I decided it was not a good moment to point out that the idiot was not me.
‘Tis true.
I’m not at my best after 15+ hours in cargo class but even at 6am sans sleep you fill out the form robotically and answer the customs/border control officer questions as concisely and unambiguously as possible. No jokes or attitude. No local vernacular which might be misinterpreted.
Don’t make their day either for the better or worse.
I was seeing my daughters last weekend, and we started talking about going to the US for the first time next year, as I will be turning 50, and my elder daughter 18. The younger one will be 15, which is not a “special” birthday, but she has always dreamt of going to New York, so within 5 minutes we all agreed that that was what we wanted to do.
Then, I started to worry a bit about the paperwork, but it may be easier than I thought since my country is in the visa waiver program. I was planning to start getting information a year in advance, but I now realize it may be exaggeratedly early.
As a Canadian, I find that it is amazingly easy to enter the United States. No visas, no ESTAs, just a passport and honest answers to reasonable questions.
“Passports check out. Where are you going?”
“Daytrip to Glacier National Park.”
“And what do you plan to do in Glacier National Park?”
“See the scenery.”
“Got anything to declare?”
“My friend has a half pack of cigarettes.”
“Okay, thanks. Enjoy your day.”
It’s often that easy. For Canadians, anyway. I can’t speak for other nationalities. Point is, that you have to be honest with CBP. If you are honest with them, they will be reasonable with you.
Given your preamble about marrying a foreigner, this is a bit confusing. If you are a bona fide tourist it is not at all difficult to visit the U.S. If you are representing yourself as an ordinary tourist when you have an agenda to visit a “friend” who is an actual or potential romantic partner, then you need to be careful.
We spent the weekend in Upstate New York. We pulled up to the border and scanned our Nexus cards. The Immigration official asked us our citizenship and we replied Canadian. That was followed by “have a good day”.
Nexus cards are terrific for expediting travel between Canada and the US (in both directions – they work for Americans coming to Canada, too). They not only identify you as a trusted traveler for customs and immigration, they expedite security screening at airports and give you access to expedited lanes both at airports and at land border crossings. The wallet-sized cards also obviate the need to carry a passport.
You just have to be careful to follow the rules exactly, because they don’t even think twice about taking the card away for virtually any little transgression. I heard about a guy who got his card revoked when he mistakenly thought he could use it to take his entire family through the Nexus lane at the airport. As a trusted traveler, you’re expected to know the rules.
As noted, travel to the US is usually very easy for Canadians (and vice-versa for Americans), and for those coming from other countries it depends on the country, but it’s still generally pretty easy, especially for those countries whose citizens don’t need a tourist visa.
I say “usually” because there have been some disturbing instances of Canadian citizens being turned away for reasons that were mysteriously unexplained, often (not always) seemingly associated with their religion or ethnicity.
The same question is asked of foreigners entering in Japan. Every time my wife and I go, we just put the name/address of the first hotel we’ll be staying at after arrival, even though we’re usually only at that hotel for one or two nights.
Same. Many countries ask for this info, and I doubt they really care what you put. Same with car rental companies. When I went to Russia, your ‘host’ was required to send an invitation for you to secure a visa - in this case, the hotel was my host. As I was staying in several hotels, I just asked the first one to send the invitation.
For US visa applications its not a criminal background, but a criminal conviction that will be assessed on a visa application. This could extend to something that you had forgotten, or had expunged in your home country - it could stand.
It may have changed in the intervening years, but (Australian) friends entering the US from Canada were turned back from the border because one had some such blot on their history. You could also not tell them about it, and just hope no data matching takes place.
It’s a standard thing internationally from what I can make out. I think it probably dates from a time when people registered at a particular hotel booked months in advance when engaging in international travel, and used it as a base and received mail there and so on. But it is now an anachronism.