← Back to context

Comment by leovonl

10 years ago

Funny, my experience as South American is the exact opposite: expensive USA VISA (USD 160!) for attending a conference, US border asking about everything, checking my story and even knowledge about programming (!), etc - UK border just asking the purpose of my travel, stamping the passport and saying "welcome to UK". And I didn't even need a VISA.

One thing for sure is: you have to know the visa requirements and you have to answer what they want to hear. That's true everywhere - USA included - so you're just lucky as a USA citizen to never go through the USA interview process.

3 comments

leovonl

Reply
eitally  10 years ago

If it makes you feel better, when Bush put that policy in place the Brazilian government was quick to institute a reciprocal fee, and the Brazilian immigration agents can be a royal pain for foreigners to deal with (I had a colleague get rejected at border entry once for a stupid, stupid reason).

  • saalweachter  10 years ago

    I've heard the story of an American going through the reciprocal process in Brazil -- getting finger printed, interviewed, all sorts of documents generated -- and then having the interviewer confess that they were just going to throw it all away because they didn't actually have anything to do with the reciprocally generated data...