@Chatsetchiens From our experience US border control is brutal!! We once flew in from Mexico to a sit in Florida. As it was over Christmas (2021) we just said we were spending Christmas with friends. The Immigration queue took nearly 3 hours and everyone was questioned intensely. Twice, during our wait, we saw people being taken away! Fortunately we knew NOT to be too honest so we said the right thing! This was during Covid times, so even stricter than usual, but I would absolutely not take any risks- especially entering US!
One poor lady arriving from Canada (wrote here last year) she got turned away at the border because she said she was heading to a housesit. Not only did it ruin both her plans & the hosts, she now has future US entry restrictions placed on her…
@Twogreys Always be cautious. Immigration officers can be tough cookies!
@Lokstar - so sorry you had to go through Florida border control. That one is extra super tight and takes a long time, esp. around the time all the south(ern) america flights come in.
SFO is much easier and quicker, like 15 minutes. PHX can be overloaded at times, but it’s generally below 30.
Florida, esp. Miami Dade, has a huge influx of drug smugglers. That’s also the reason why after you received your luggage you will have had that checked extra (unless they eased up on that one)
About saying you’re on a house sit - you are basically trying to work illegally, according to law. So, you know - just make it easy for them, tell them you’re on vacation, give them the host’s address (they’ll ask) and done.
Goodness me. That sounds dreadful and actually quite unnerving what we can potentially be up against. My aunt and uncle both strongly insisted I didn’t go across the bridge from Canada to New York State but being young at the time, I had a “What’s the big deal?” type of attitude and thought it’d be a nice little adventure to hop over the border! Thank goodness they talked sense into me!
To me, I would hate to be subjected to such a hardcore interrogation as it is hardly the nicest introduction to a stay in another country.
As you say, we need to be prepared and ready to keep it simple when asked. And definitely not give them any reason to start digging any further!
To get a little perspective here - immigration into the US is not as smooth as in China, but it is mostly only slightly stressful (a handful of questions, iris scan, fingerprints). If you raise a red flag, there will be more questions, and if they don’t like your answers, that’s when things get lengthy and tedious.
My then-gf and I immigrated into MDW a long time ago, when there were still direct flights on DC-10s from Frankfurt to MDW; immigration queue I only remember as “where’s the queue”, and I was basically waved through. She was randomly selected to be checked more thoroughly, so they took her and her luggage away for, say, 15 minutes, but nothing weird happened.
Random flagging, by dice or a computer, btw, happen all the time in security checkpoints, just to keep the officers on alert. The software will insert a knife or a bottle into the X-ray image of your luggage, and they have to deal with this according to procedure.
That said, if you’re a person of colour, or immigrating from a known drug trafficker state, or raising a ruckus, or trying to be funny, you’re much more likely to be checked very thoroughly. Immigration officers strictly follow protocol, it’s no use trying to joke with them, they will find that suspicious (well, perhaps except for the one that started joking around with me in SFO - hi Darren, if you read this!); I believe the skin colour thing has diminished quite a bit the past couple of years, but the rest holds very true. And the luggage double-checking in Miami I did ask about and it was explained to me as a dire necessity.
My husband and I started traveling pretty much full-time back in 2011 and have been sitting full-time since 2014. And while I can’t perfectly recall the many dozens of interactions I have had with immigration officials over such a long period, one thing I can say with certainty is that we have never been questioned extensively about our travel plans.
The only time I can recall ever having to provide proof of accommodation was when we had a 12 hour layover in China and they carefully studied our flight tickets and hotel booking.
In most cases, had we not greeted the agent with a friendly hello, there probably would have been zero communication between us.
People housesitting internationally are doing so as a means of tourism so I don’t find it dishonest to answer this way if I were to be asked my purpose for entering the country. I personally don’t feel like housesitters are robbing locals of any particular country of vital employment opportunities in large numbers, so I don’t feel like I am doing anything wrong by providing this service or not mentioning it.
I think the chances of someone being questioned by border officials so extensively that they would feel like they have no other option but to reveal their housesitting plans is extremely low.
But for anyone who has major concerns about it, you can do things like delete the app on your phone, make sure the hosts and you have your ‘story straight’ if they were to contact them,etc…
Look at this horrifying story:
Some people have felt that they were raped by US border officers.
Not telling all the details is not being dishonest. You basically fill in a form with options like business/tourism… I tick tourism and I am 100% honest. I sit as a hobby and enjoy visiting other places.
I put the address of the first place where I am staying, sometimes a hotel, sometimes an airbnb, sometimes I go straight to the sit. But I don’t have to go into further details.
Neither have I. Actually, I was so relaxed that I was caught off guard in this last entry process in Alaska. I was staying first in an Airbnb, so no worries. When I was asked what I was planning to do, it just came out “I honestly don’t know yet. I want to explore a bit first and then decide, I have plenty of time. I am sure I want to take some tours but I want to shop around a bit” Next question was “do you have a return ticket?”, which I obviously had and that was it.
Nowadays they’re really used to seeing normal addresses instead of hotel names because of Airbnb.
That is horrifying. No wonderful Barry and Margaret were so against the idea of me just hopping over to the States. How naive and ill-informed I was back then!
Well, that depends. For example it depends on travel history (obvious from stamps in your passport but they have other ways too). And on the length of your stay.
They may start asking how the traveller can afford such a long stay, for example.
Interesting you should make that last comment. When I was asked by the official at Oslo why I was there for two weeks and I answered that I was ‘staying with friends’.
He replied, “I thought so as accommodation here in this country would be too expensive for you.” He made a snap judgment and obviously thought I wasn’t very well-heeled!!!
Cheeky!
I’ve only once been asked to prove I can financially support myself and that was entering Ireland in 2019.
I’m learning so much from this thread. I’ve never been asked that before when entering any country. Mind you, my maximum stay has generally been no longer than three weeks.
I often wonder how these influencers who roam the globe manage with dealing with Uncle Sam!
Anyway, this is a very enlightening conversation that I’m learning a great deal from!