Earlier quoted context omitted.
> What if I told you the people Canada really want have no issues getting a US work visa/Green Card? This is ignorant. Stop pretending like the government is just barring illegals or "low-skill" workers (as you indicate in another thread) and welcome everyone else. I used to hold O-1. I have approved EB-1A I-140. Yet I ended up surprisingly being denied entry by the US CBP, unable to return to my home in the US, almo…
> Yet I ended up surprisingly being denied entry by the US CBP Did it have anything to do with failing a background check? Often, denials aren't as "surprising" as they seem.
After my wife moved to Canada to wait for her US work permit / visa last year, I visited her every few times. I hold O-1 status in the US but didn't have an O-1 visa. I had been able to return to the US through a program called Automatic Revalidation [1].
At the same port-of-entry, using the same documents, CBP let me in three times. Every time they put me in secondary inspection, ask me for a lot of details about my travel. But they did let me in. The fourth time, the CBP changed their mind. They said a student visa I used to use was revoked a few years ago and wanted me to apply for an O-1 visa to prove my eligibility to enter, which I argued had nothing to do with my O-1 eligibility.
Why was my student visa revoked? I quote the email the consulate sent me years ago: "The revocation of your visa was due to additional information that became available after the visa was issued." That's it. I had sent follow-up emails and requested FOIA but never got any more details. That was a hard-earned visa. When I left the US to a Latin American country to apply for the new visa, I was detained and interrogated by CBP at the airport, presumably because of suspicions of Chinese espionage -- I was also investigated by FBI at some point. I lived in a country that was badly hit by COVID for two months to wait for the administrative processing of my visa. They stamped the visa, then revoked it, and that hit me again after years.
Surprising? Having the same travel documents at the same port, being eligible for entry for 3 times but denied the 4th time is definitely surprising. Not surprising? Yeah I have had a lot of troubles with the US government.
I never technically "fail a background check". Every of my previous visas and immigration petitions got approved after an unusually long obscured process. But how fair is it? Can I even expect an end to this?
And I'm definitely not the only one. I know a community of Chinese students / workers with more or less similar experiences. You can also search on Reddit for stories about long visa administrative processing that ruined people's careers and life.
[1] https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/us-visas/visa-inf...