Because we're travelling to the US in September, I thought I'd better check the visa waiver position, since there have been some changes this year. The nasty green forms that one used to have to complete on the plane have been replaced with Electronic System for Travel Authorization (ESTA) - which (of course) has to be completed on-line. I was looking at some very official appearing websites for this which were charging somewhere between £8 and £20 (non-refundable, no matter what the outcome) which were top of the list in the Google search. Luckily, I also looked at the US Homeland Security website where -- what do you know -- you can complete the form for free! I suppose this means we all have to be more careful about Google-sponsored sites?
For me, the on-line completion is excellent, but there are still lots of people in the UK who don't have easy access to the Internet -- they're getting more excluded, I guess ...
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Time to stop complaining and write about things I enjoy ...
Tianjin
A (little) bit about me ...
- Dr Bob
- Birmingham, United Kingdom
- I'm a retired academic in Birmingham, England. I like big cities, live music, claret and good food.
4 comments:
It's much less a surveillance problem than having a layover in Heathrow. If you need help, will gladly offer it; Denis has had to go thru it. It's good for two years and shouldn't cost you anything. You really have to be careful of scam sites from your native country who will charge an avg of $50 for the privilege of sending stuff to the gov site.
(Again, let me reiterate - your country is much worse than mine in terms of ID. I will not ever take a layover at Heathrow due to what they require of me.)
Thanks for the offer of help, but it wasn't a problem -- I'm not very bothered about these regulations, I AM concerned that unscrupulous people are trying to capitalise on it and take money from those that don't understand the system.
I agree with you. More importantly: where are you going to be in the US?
You know it's San Francisco by now -- we needed somewhere laid back and a long way from home -- getting away from the book (the final draft goes to the Publishers on Friday, publication Feb/Mar 2010).
We'll be in Fance at Christmas, but Nice again ...
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