[Jmur]

My partner and I have visited the USA for holidays six times in recent years. We needed to apply for new ESTAs recently, and I was surprised when mine was approved but my partners was rejected. Nothing has changed in our responses to the online questions, or to our employment or health. You are given no reason for the rejection. We are booked to travel to the US again in November. To compound this, there are no US tourist Visa applications being processed at present. Is this a common occurance?

[nevereconomy]

I believe you can go to the ESTA website and double check that you did not accidentally answer a question incorrectly. Otherwise it could be that your names identically match someone the US is trying to keep out. Unfortunately I think there is no way to find that out – the US is very secretive about this kind of thing.

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Jmur

[Stowage222]

I agree nevereconomy. I knew of a BA CSD who, when she got married, acquired the same name as a known female the US authorities were looking for. Despite being crew she knew automatically she would have to spend each time in secondary. Although she is white British and the US lady in question was African/American, there was nothing she could do. When asked how long she would have to endure this process they said until the real person is caught or 10 years!!

[JayLibove]

I don’t know if the Traveler Redress Program applies to non-US persons, but here’s something to look into:

https://www.dhs.gov/dhs-trip

[Cassie10]

My husband has a fairly common name with no middle name and has been sent to secondary inspection for years. Apparently there’s several criminals with his name and although (from what we can gather) they are US citizens with a different birthdate it makes no difference.
He went through the redress process, was approved and we entered this in the booking on our last trip in Nov19 and he was atill sent to secondary.
The immigration officer was very nice and said that the redress number was basically useless and won’t necessarily assist.
He’s now going through the process of officially adding a middle name in the hope that might help.

[Senator]

A couple of years back, a close friend and I had purchased Lufthansa/Swiss First tickets to Chicago heading out for a mix of business and pleasure. He is Swedish national and his brother is now dual citizen and has lived in the US for decades. My friend has travelled at least 40-50 times to the US over the past two decades for business and pleasure. We had been at least 10 times together.

He was filling out an updated ESTA one Sunday afternoon, and got distracted for a brief second. He checked the wrong button, one of those questions you should say “NO” and not “YES” to. Submitted, and was surprised when nothing came back.

He contacted the ESTA admin in DC, nothing they could do. He was told he needed to apply for a reentry B-visa. He came to Stockholm on the day of departure, we tried every trick in the bag to get him an appointment with the consular section of the embassy to no avail. He now has a visa. He’s been told it is likely he will for the rest of his life.

He learned this was not uncommon. Applicants inadvertently check the wrong boxes online.

[Author]

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