Wanting to fly back home to Australia Via US

[jim77827]

Hello,

I wondered if anyone had some advice for me. I am an Australian. Last year I left Australia with my wife and daughter to go the US. We went in on the 3 month visa waiver. I am part of a Christian Church which has branches in the US and Australia and was spending time in the US with my friends and fellow members of the same church. While there we decided we would like to extend our visit for about a year. To begin with I went ahead and extended my return ticket to Australia and then made enquiries as to getting an extension on the Visa.

I found out that there is no way that we could extend our visa from the visa waiver to another type of visa, so we left the US (within the 3month visa waiver period) and went to the UK with plans to go to the US embassy and get a 1 year non-immigrant visa to allow us to go back to the US for 9 months. We were denied the application at the embassy. So we instead ended up staying here in the UK for the last 6 months. So now our stay is almost up here in the UK and we are wanting to go back home to Australia.

We were wanting to use our already booked return flight to Australia (so we don't have to spend thousands on a new flight direct from UK to Australia) which goes from Boston to Atlanta to LA then to Australia on an american airlines. We have paid for a new flight from the UK to the US to connect with our already booked flight back to Australia. We only have a 2hr lay over at Boston airport and then we join the remaining flights to get back home to Australia.

So my question is this, do you think there will be any problems for us to be granted entry into the US to join our remaining flights back to Australia given the fact that we were denied the US non-immigration visa?

Thanks for your help in this matter.

[Marco 72]

Hi. If you are an Australian citizen and don't have a US visa, you now need an approved ESTA in order to board a US-bound flight. So you either need to fill it in or (if you already had an approved ESTA before) update it with the information about your visa denial. If your ESTA comes back denied, you won't be allowed to board your flight.

In general, it's not a good idea to apply for a visa to visit the US if you are eligible for the VWP, unless you are of retirement age.

[Marco 72]

Hi. If you are an Australian citizen and don't have a US visa, you now need an approved ESTA in order to board a US-bound flight. So you either need to fill it in or (if you already had an approved ESTA before) update it with the information about your visa denial. If your ESTA comes back denied, you won't be allowed to board your flight.

In general, it's not a good idea to apply for a visa to visit the US if you are eligible for the VWP, unless you are of retirement age.