I hate the government!!!
Yesterday my cousin and his family were coming to visit me from Toronto. They were going to spend a few hours with me, and then I was driving them to the airport. They are headed to a wedding in San Francisco. It's for my cousin-in-law's ONLY brother. Very important event
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Just to let you know about what actually happened, since now i have all the details. They did actually bring the invitation, their bills, plane tickets, my address and number, and much more to show the immigration officials, but those asses are so stuck on numbers and BS that they didn't even care.
The issue was that they had a TRANSIT visa not a TOURIST visa. Seemingly a simple problem, it was greatly complicated. They had actually gotten the visa when traveling from Australia to Canada, but had to make a stop in Hawaii, thus needed a transit visa for the US. The confusion arose in the fact that transit visas are intended for a single stop in the US, but when they had received the visa, whoever had issued it, had made it so that they were allowed multiple visits over a period of seven years. Kinda weird when its only meant to get you from Australia to Canada....
but anyway, the had also used this visa without problems for several visits to the US over the past two years to visit family without any problems, so they did not think they would need anything else.
In the end the customs person stated that it was not a TOURIST visa so they couldn't cross the border, even if it was for multiple entrances and even if they had used it before and even if it was a genuine reason, the wedding of her ONLY brother.
We did end up having to do some calling around and even though the wait at the US Embassy for 42 days for an appointment (bastards...), they were able to get an emergency appointment. So in the end, the entire family didn't end up going, but just my cousin-in-law (she flew from Toronto this time).
But sadly the hassle was just such an aggravating mess. The trip had been planned for months with people needing to take time off from work and getting everything setup. They ended up losing over 1000 dollars in plane tickets. Quite sad.
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And your right, it is sad, family is family, regadless of borders. You'd think it would qualify as a humanitarian reason to allow it. I'd hate to think if they went by flight from Toronto right off the bat, this whole situation could have been by-passed, that is until this problem 'technicallity' manifested itself, like it just did.
I'm curious.. did your family actually need the visa? I never have. And I've actually stayed in the US for months at a time, almost a year once (2002-2003) after 9/11 (even though i should only have been allowed to stay for 6 months). And when I cam back to Canada, the only thing I had to do was reapply for OHIP (which was way easy and didn't cost a thing) But then again I'm Canadain born, might be different legalities if not born here, even if a permanent resident or a legal-n-able-to-vote-citizen.
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It is quite sad that US Customs does not offer any type of emergency visa that works within the same 24 hours of the incident. It is quite bothersome that even an emergency requires a 3 day wait. Completely retarded.
Now Canadian embassy, they're awesome. You go, you wait about an hour, you get your Visa. No problems at all. The US has a serious ego complex....
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