Visa for US citizen to visit Australia

Factual Questions
1

Help me settle a little disagreement I am having with a friend about whether a US citizen needs a visa to visit Australia as a tourist. She says No, I say Yes.

The Australian immigration web site Department of Home Affairs seems to support my claim that one needs to pre-apply for an electronic visa to visit Australia. I used their Visa Wizard and it says I probably need a 600 or a 601 Visa.

Anyone have any other info supporting or refuting my position?

Thanks!

ETA - I am not actually planning to visit Australia anytime soon.

2

The US State Department publishes travel advisories for every country. Here is what they have to say about Australia:

3

Thanks. The two governments agree - you can’t just show up in Sydney. You need official (though minimal and probably painless) pre-approval.

4

Yes, you do, but it’s online and pretty much instant – I think I got the official notice that mine had been approved within a minute or so of applying.

5

I know that New Zealand and Australia have a mutual agreement between them that if you are a Citizen of one, Visas are not required for visiting the other country.

I believe for all other countries, everyone who visits Australia needs a Visa.

Passports, of course, are required everywhere for everyone.

6

The Australian bureaucracy (especially Immigration) makes the California DMV customer service look like a party. If you don’t have every “i” dotted and every “t” crossed, the Australian government bureaucracy will do whatever it can to make your life extremely difficult.

Yes, you need a visa to visit Australia. Yes, you must have your visa before you depart for Australia. Yes, the commercial airline that will transport you to Australia will confirm your visa before you are even allowed to board the plane. And yes, if you somehow make it on the plane without visa verification, you will be stopped at Passport Control in Australia, found you have no visa, be denied entry, and put back on the next plane out of Australia to the location you just left for Australia.

7

I had a 10 hour layover in Sydney (Seoul to Auckland) and had to apply for a visa to visit. My air carrier actually insisted that I have one as I checked into my flight from Seoul- but I was already one step ahead of them.

8

NZers need a visa to visit Australia, but it is an electronic one automatically generated as you enter the country so you wouldn’t necessarily be aware that you had one.

9

Is that a recent change? I’m pretty sure it was explicitly clear I didn’t need one when I moved here in’99.

10

Special category visas for New Zealanders in Australia since 1994.

http://www.immi.gov.au/media/fact-sheets/17nz.htm

It’s a formality that you’d have no reason to be aware of.

11

Oh. Okay, in that case I was right, but wrong at the same time. Weird.

12

Personally, I’m not sure something like that really counts as a visa - I mean, if you don’t have to do anything to obtain it, it doesn’t cost anything, and they’re issued automatically… doesn’t really match my experience with visas, which (at a minimum) require you to fill in a form and pay some sort of processing fee, even if it’s at the airport.

13

Depends. My first visit to Australia required a visa–I got the form from the local Australian consulate, filled it out, and took it back to the Australian consulate. They printed the visa out and pasted it in my passport. There was no fee.

On subsequent visits to Australia, my visa was issued electronically. Again, there was no fee. I assume that the Australian border official could access it on the computer; and certainly, the airline could confirm that. At any rate, I had to do nothing to obtain it–in essence, it came with my flight ticket.

14

It’s not completely automatic. If border control decide not to let you in for some reason (drug/criminal history) then you don’t get a visa and are sent home.