Please help. I am a 28 year old Aussie male planning on visiting to the U.S to visit my girlfriend on ESTA (unique situation). Will US Customs turn me around?

Hey guys. I have travelled to New Zealand, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Philippines and Malaysia and I’ve never really had a problem. But I have heard that US Border Control are ridiculously strict along with some other crazy stories which sound crazy to me but could potentially be true.

I pretty much signed up reddit just because I needed to ask this question.I have a girlfriend who I met online 10 years ago whilst I was still going to school. We used to write emails to each other back in the day and Skype a lot. Long story short, after we both dated different people.. last year just before just happened we wanted to meet each other.

The initial plan was for her to come here. But our government shut our borders. We’ve now waited for over a year and the situation hasn’t improved. I’ve finally decided the only thing we can do is for me to visit.

There are a few problems.

I am a Commercial Pilot (not employed due to COVID, but working a part time job with some government assistance), and I can’t be gone out of the country for more than 3 months. I need to renew my pilots medical and I need to also renew a part of my pilots license.

Also, I’m not really fond in staying in USA for more than a few weeks in general. I’d like to spend time with her and travel with her, but I prefer to live here in Australia with my family and friends so I only want to go for a few weeks.

However, our government COVID outbound exemption rules require us to be away from our country for at least 90 days.

This would mean I need to get an ESTA visa. However the problem is, won’t it look bad to the US Customs agents if I have my return ticket booked for the last 89th day? EDIT: I now think it’s better if I leave on the 70th day and spend 20 days in New Zealand?

The Australian outbound exemption rules REQUIRE this. I have NO desire to be out of home for this long. I’m only doing this because we both need to see each other. So my plan is to stay for 89 days and spend a night in a transit airport waiting for a flight back since I don’t want to overstay my ESTA.

Lastly I have ZERO interest in living in the U.S. Even if someone paid me to live there I wouldn’t want to and never have wanted to. Australia has an amazing health care system, we don’t have mass shootings, we don’t have anywhere near the gun crime, police brutality, ghettos, gang violence, the sad amounts of homelessness. gang violence etc. etc. I hope Im not offending anyone, but I just don’t have any desire to leave to a country I feel will be less safe and living there…

My girlfriend also wants to move here and she has wanted to since I have known her.Is it true that US Customs Agents really do their best to find every excuse under the sun to keep foreigners out? Is it true that many of them are racists and they purposely hire racists? Although I have lived here in Australia my entire life, my parents are originally from Sri Lanka, so I am brown…would I be treated differently for this?

So far the plan is for me to make a folder to give to the customs border agent at the booth with the following that they can go through:

1. Print out of ESTA
2. Print out of the Australian outbound exemption
3. Proof of vaccination (I’m only travelling after I get vaccinated)
4. Print out of my return ticket (I’m going to try and get a hard copy)
5. Passport
6. Citizenship
7. Print out of my tax file number
8. Print out of my tax lodgements
9. Commercial Pilots license
10. Pilots medical
11. ASIC (a security clearance card that allows me to get into airports in Australia). Perhaps they can use this to contact the AFP and ask for more details
12. Superannuation details printed out
13. Drivers license
14. Bank card
15. Medicare card
16. Letter from my current boss
17. My last paycheck
18. Bank statements
19. Copies of all the ASX shares I own and have traded
20. Contact details (phone numbers and addresses) of my girlfriend, her family members and friends who know all about me, have talked with me etc. This is about 10 people? Is that enough?
21. Contact details of my own family and friends (this will be a list of about 29 people)
22. emails that go all the way back to 2010 with my girlfriend. I’m also happy to give them access to my emails. I’ve got nothing to hide. Never done drugs, don’t drink either and there’s literally nothing I can hide in there anyway. I also don’t use Facebook or any social media except for skype so I can probably provide them with my logins for that?
23. I will be planning to stay mostly at my girlfriends parents place which the address will be provided, but I will also put in the details of the hotels and Airbnb’s we will be staying at including receipts. My girlfriend and I will be going halves
24. Copies of my university details and transcripts
25. Copies of my aviation exam results which support my license information
26. Copy of my pilots logbook and how many hours I have
27. Copies of my phone bills with also my call history and contact details of my telecommunications provider
28. A full schedule of all the things I will be doing in the U.S and places (day by day) with details like list of locations and contact details of the venues that go with the date etc. etc.

Is there anything more I need to take with me? Thats literally all I can think of which they might want to look at? I actually don’t mind if I have to provide more paperwork as I am quiet an organised person with paperwork. Will it matter if I take a flight that transits through another country (most likely Singapore or New Zealand)? I have no criminal record and the last thing I want to do is a stain against my name or being turned around.

My biggest concerns are:

The fact that I haven’t met my girlfriend in person yet

I work only a part time job with government assistance due to COVID killing my industry.The duration for the stay (something I don’t even want but have no choice due to our exemption rules).

My ethnicity (as I’ve heard that many of the US Border/Customs agents are apparently racist) and all I hear on the news is about all the racism issues that apparently happens over there by government workers like police/politicians and from what my girlfriend has told me.I doubt there’s any US Border custom workers on this forum that could offere advice (for obvious reasons) so if anyone has already been through the process or anyone been turned around please let me know and let me know why.

Thank you so much for all your help everyone and I hope everyone is safe and happy during these tough times ❤️

EDIT: I have also posted this on another reddit forum to try and get as much information as possible. Thanks ❤️

submitted by /u/HSVMaloo1993
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source https://www.reddit.com/r/immigration/comments/or9ia1/please_help_i_am_a_28_year_old_aussie_male/