Advice - US Visa Waiver if visa denied

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dmudgeau

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Hi

I am wondering if anyone has any experience with going to the US on the Visa Waiver program if you previously had a visa denied before

Heres the story

My girlfriend is from South Korea we tried to plan a trip to the US in short notice about 1 month ago. She is eligible for the Visa Waiver program but if you are South Korea, you must have an electronic passport to do it.

There was no time to organise to change her passport so instead we tried to get her a visa. It was denied because they reckoned she could be one of those people who will go to the US and not leave. This is because she is in Australia on a working holiday visa and she didnt have strong ties to Australia

Ok so all hope was lost I thought and until shes been here longer and get her to be a permanent resident I thought theres no way they will ever approve a Visa again

Still, I told her to get the electronic passport just in case

It arrived the other day so I thought might as well try my luck anyways and applied her for the visa waiver. I ticked the box Yes she has previously been denied a visa and the application went into a pending status

I was pretty sure it would come back denied which means she still needs to get a visa now all the time but to my surprise it came back approved about 30 mins later!!

I was like yeah lets go to the US then..

Now I always like to make 100% sure of these things so I emailed the US visa dept and this is the response I got

"We do not advise applicants to travel on the Visa Waiver program if they have been refused a visa.
Please be advised that visa waiver is the pureview of the Dept of homeland security not the Dept of State.
Entry into the US is always at the discretion of the US customers and Border protection officials"

I am like WTF!!!! I already knew that when we get to customs there they can have the final say and the visa waiver is not a guarantee of entry but why would they actually take the time to manually review her visa waiver application with her visa refusal history and approve it?

If they dont advise you to travel on a visa waiver why not just decline it?

Because from their end the way they make it look is that we should be fine to travel to the US?? Approving the Visa Waiver means she doesnt have to get a visa now so you would think all the history of her refusal because of not having strong ties to Australia is not that important and we should be fine to go to the US. I figured if the person looking at the application thought it was still not a good idea to let her in why not either decline it or give her conditional approval that she should supply further documents at point of entry?

Anyways I just dont know what to do.. On one hand I am thinking they are just saying these things to cover themselves and probably in fact it will all be alright and we should still go to the US.. But on the other hand I keep worry we will get there and she will be denied entry and we will have to turn around and come back..

Sorry for the long post.. Does anyone have any experience with this sort of thing or have advice?

Thanks...
 
I just read your post - they are advising you that in your case they don't handle the waivers. You need to address the question to the Dept. of Homeland Security. The real problem is that you want to travel now and not wait and are hoping that others can help make this happen. Not trying to be an annoyance but that's the truth. Getting a VISA to come to the US isn't easy and, being denied in the past should give you a good answer in order to be able to determine the odds of getting one by just showing up. You're best served by not doing so since, yes, there is a chance of being denied entry.

If you want alternatives you really should speak to an immigration attorney since cases like these are always specific to an individual's history.
 
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