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Visitors To US Now Required To Register Online

Posted by kdawson on from the e-papers-please dept.

mytrip sends a reminder that starting today, visitors to the US from 35 visa-waiver countries will be required to register online with the Department of Homeland Security in advance. The DHS is asking people to go online for the ESTA program 72 hours before traveling, but they can register any amount of time ahead. Approval, once granted, is good for 2 years. DHS says that most applications are approved in 4 seconds. If an application is rejected, the traveler will have to go to a US embassy and get a visa. CNet reports that information from applications will be retained for 12 years, and eventually up to 75 years.

6 of 734 comments (clear)

  1. Why would anyone want to come to this shithole? by Average_Joe_Sixpack · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    Unless you have to for business reasons?

  2. All for you by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Flamebait

    America is a real turd pile. I hope it enters into a new isolationist phase and stops fanning its constituent matter everywhere.

  3. Doesn't bother me, since I never plan to go. by VShael · · Score: -1, Flamebait

    After America started running headlong towards a police-state, it just wouldn't make sense to go there.
    In the same way that an American Jew wouldn't have gone to Germany in 1938.

    Call it trolling if you want, but it's the truth. There are minorities out there who would consider visiting the US to be too dangerous. It's a country that can arrest and detain without warrant, without charges, without representation and without trial. And it believes in torture. And the death penalty.

    The odds of anything happening to me are slim, sure, but seriously, why even take the risk? So I can get mugged in Times Square? Visit the Creationist museum at the Grand Canyon?

  4. Re:So this is that then by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Flamebait

    Because everyone cares what your 20 year old self with oh so many life experiences thinks?

  5. Re:So this is that then by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Flamebait

    I'm so sick of British people who bitch about America. You all are the biggest bunch of fair weather friends the US has ever had. Not to mention the astonishingly shameless hypocrisy. England is the most surveilled country on the planet. Talk about others being gripped with paranoia when you can walk down the street without a camera shoved up your tight British arse.
      I know not all British people are like this of course, but there is definitely a fair bit of this mindless self indulgent America hating going on over there. Yeah, we get it George Bush is fucking piece of shit. Thanks a lot Socrates.

  6. Why do morons always pop up with this crap? by GuloGulo · · Score: 1, Flamebait

    "As a potential Johnny foreigner, I will spend my hard won Euros somewhere else."

    Please do, you won't be missed.

    Of course, you're lying, and this story has fuck all to do with a decision to come to the US you may or may not have actually made, but it's funny that you'd choose to say the same retarded shit that pops up immediately in these conversations.

    In ALL serioussness, if this trivial bit of beauracracy GENUINELY causes you to stay away, we're glad about it.

    --
    "The government grants you rights, not the other way around."-- beav007. Yes, these people really exist...