Standing before the US customs officer who's inspecting your passport, you steal a glance at the exit for passengers going to collect their luggage at the carousel.
But any excitement soon dissolves into a sense of foreboding as the officer directs you down a different corridor — to the Customs and Border Protection rooms.
The scene is played out for countless foreign visitors arriving at US airports every day whose stated travel intentions are deemed to warrant further investigation.
It ends in relief — if a little exasperation — for travellers allowed to continue on their way.
But in the 12 months to May 1, it ended in anguish for 1194 Australians denied entry to the US and put on the first plane home.
That works out to one in every 760 Australian visitors to the US being turned away at the border, according to figures from the US Department of Homeland Security.
YOUR SAY: Readers describe their encounters with US immigration officials.
Over the same time period, just 18 Australians were turned away at New Zealand's border and two nationals never made it past immigration officers in Indonesia.
These countries account for the three most popular overseas holiday destinations for Australians, according to the Bureau of Statistics. So why the relatively stiff standards for travellers to America? Especially as many of us start booking flights to catch the northern hemisphere summer?
Because thousands of tourists (and also students) overstay their visas, only to end up living and working in the US illegally, says the Department of Homeland Security.
"Whether you're travelling to America on a tourist visa or as a tourist on a visa waiver program, the presumption is that everybody is an intending immigrant," New York-based immigration lawyer Noemi Masliah said.
"It's up to the person applying to enter at the border with a visa to overcome that presumption. It's not up to the border protection officers to figure it out. If you cannot overcome the presumption, you'll be turned around."
And US border protection officers have considerable discretion to do so. There are no fewer than 60 grounds of inadmissibility within the US Immigration and Nationality Act.
The most common stumbling block is failing to prove you intend to return home, Ms Masliah said. And pursuing an amorous relationship with an American citizen does not help one's cause, she said, because it raises suspicions you really intend to marry and change your status to permanent resident (something permitted only if the tourist can prove the marriage was not planned but was a spur-of-the-moment event).
It's up to visitors to show they have strong ties to Australia like property ownership or a full-time job or family obligations. "You need to have countervailing evidence that you're going back to your home country," Ms Masliah said.
The trend in paying for tickets online and only printing out a boarding pass for the arriving flight also gets tourists into trouble. "I would highly recommend printing out your return ticket, because the inspectors at the airport like to see it up front and they don't like to go into your mobile phone to see if you have a return ticket somewhere in your email inbox," Ms Masliah said.
Australians who are refused entry may never again travel to the US under the visa waiver program and must instead apply for a visa in advance at a US consulate. The bureaucratic hoops are doubly difficult for people turned away because of an allegation of fraud, Ms Masliah said.
http://news.ninemsn.com.au/world/1072615/almost-1200-aussies-turned-away-from-us-border
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