h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

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I am not in a position to comment further.

Those of you who know what the problem is are welcomed to comment!

Glad I got that out of my system...now I'm going to pretend I'm working!



Bureaucracy is a four letter word!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!



Ok...so I *don't* have it out of my system.

eek!!

And then some...

I do not know what the problem is, so I can't really comment!

Kaz,

You are more likely to run into Krispy then we are.

He is stuck on your side of the pond (temporarily) ...well, actually he got as far as Cincinnati before being sent back.

Grrrrrrrrrrrr.

So much for Homeland Security!!!!!

arghhhhhhhhhhhh

What!!! Thats terrible, been sent back? Wonder how they justified that one? Guess he had a visa and everything, and now probably doesn't have somewhere to live, blimey, that sucks.

I know here in Seattle (or at the US/Canadian border) they've been sending people back if you're entering with a tourist visa, but your answers to any of their questions give them any reason to believe you might try to find a way to stay longer. (Even if you're not, but they interpret your answers to mean that, if that makes sense, which it shouldn't.)

For example, there was an article in the paper about a Canadian woman who was trying to cross the border with her American boyfriend to go to the boyfriend sister's wedding. When the border people heard the word "wedding", and saw the woman standing there with her boyfriend, they decided that she was trying to sneak into the country and get married, and told her she couldn't come in without a bride visa.

According to the article in the paper, the couple had no desire or intention to get married for at least a year or so down the road, but the woman was supposed to be part of the wedding party in the sister's wedding, and here she is held up at the border -- ergh!

So, for some reason or another, the agents have been told to be on the look out for people who are entering on tourist visas, but are thinking or planning to change to other kinds of status while still in the country -- i.e., trying to become a student, trying to get a job, trying to get married.

(Which, being the bureaucrats that they are, they really don't want you to do -- it muddles the paperwork trail among other things. Actually, I can see possibly one legitimate reason for this kind of policy -- there are potentially some people whom the US would be willing to grant tourist visas to, but not other kinds of visas that would lead to longer, more permanent stays -- i.e., people where if they applied to go visit old grandma or disneyworld for a week, the US would say "sure!", but if they applied for a student visa, the US would say "sorry, nope, no way, you fall into one of our restricted categories." Which is why the official way is to become a student, or get a job, or become engaged, etc., and then apply for that type of visa rather than a tourist visa. But I digress.)

But anyways, this is the only thing I can think of that may have happened, especially if he made it all the way to Cincinnati. Some of the things the agents look for when they're evaluating whether you truly count as a "tourist" on a tourist visa or not is whether you have a job to go back to (no, right?), a spouse and/or children to go back to (no), your own place to live to go back to (i.e., you have to be able to give them a permanent address, ???). If you don't have something like 2 out of those 3, then they tend to assume that you're not a tourist, regardless of what else you might say.

Of course, if he wasn't coming over on a tourist visa, all of this would be irrelevant -- but the fact that he didn't make it past Cincinnati makes me think that he was -- most people who are turned back these days are either on tourist visas or student visas (and for the latter, it's usually because they've either forgotten some vital piece of paperwork, or because their school has reported that their grades or attendance have slipped below some line and they no longer qualify for the student visas).

Again, digressing.

I would just like to make a comment ... this megasucks.

Thanks for your insight Mikey

We can work it out.