heyseus

Hi there,

I'm a UKC, whilst my girlfriend is American. We have virtually identical circumstances (online work meaning we can be anywhere, extensive travellers, no mortgage/jobs in out home countries). She gets nervous about travelling in the UK, and I wonder about travelling to the US. She's flown into England multiple times in the past year (7 times) and has not really had a problem (she was questioned more extensively last week, but nothing severe).

It seems highly unlikely to me that she wouldn't be let in, just as it seems unlikely to her that I wouldn't pass US border control.

So I'm wondering, which country refuses the other country's citizens more frequently, the USA or the UK? Is there any data out there? Are the two even comparable?

Pulaski

Well the difference in size makes any meaningful comparison difficult, but I am fairly certain that rejection of both British citizens by the US and US citizens by Britain are both negligible. I'd be surprised if either is turning away more than 1 in 1,000 (roughly one person from every three planes), and given the numbers of people who come through Heathrow and change planes to fly to America, and who may account for many of the rejections, the number of UK citizens rejected by the US may be much fewer than even 1 in 1,000.

fozzyb

A quick bit of googling and I found:-

https://www.gov.uk/government/upload...q3-2014snr.pdf

It states that the year up to September 2014 there were 17,587 refusals at the point of entry and 115.3M admissions. So that's a refusal rate of 0.015%.

I couldn't find any data on the country of origin of those refusals.

I don't know if those stats include UK citizens returning to the UK either.

Pulaski

So that's 3 people in 20,000 on average across all nationalities. ..... And I'd bet that the US is below average.

scrubbedexpat091

It's a decade old data wise, and I was unable to find anything more recent for the US.

Inspection Results - FY 2005

http://trac.syr.edu/immigration/repo...142table1.html

fozzyb

I don't know. I would guess the rejection rate for EU citizens must be close to zero, and there are likely to be a lot of them - which means the ratio for non-EU countries must be quite a bit higher than 0.015%.

Its still a tiny number though...

Pulaski

The numbers for the EU are counterbalanced by those coming from south Asia and Africa. Given the location, size of population, and historic ties to the UK I would expect that rejections will be skewed to Pakistanis and Nigerians, followed by Indians, Bangladeshis, and east Africans. ...... A marginally relevant statistic: about 20 years ago 20% of the inmates in the Holloway women's prison were Nigerians!

sir_eccles

Thinking about it logically. Those that are refused will be refused for a pretty good reason. Therefore the average ukc or usc traveling normally will not be anywhere near those reasons.

Stop worrying.

fozzyb

Sorry I couldn't let this one beat me....

Digging around on the ONS web page I found: Immigration Statistics: admissions - Datasets | data.gov.uk

In 2014
Total arrivals into UK of USA citizens : 3,840,000
Of whom number of refusals : 2,251

So as a percentage that is 0.0586% or 1 in 1706

fozzyb

Further to Pulaski's point, extracting some more numbers from that spreadsheet:-

EU 1755 refusals out of 102,000,000 = 0.0017%
USA 2251 refusals out of 3,840,000 = 0.0586%
Nigeria 946 refusals out of 264,000 = 0.358%
Pakistan 672 refusals out of 212,000 = 0.317%

(In the stats EU includes UK)

Pulaski

So the rate (%) of rejections of Pakistanis is about 5x that of USCs, and Nigerians 6x.

fozzyb

Which is strange since the Nigerians and Pakistani's would have needed a visa, wheras the USCs might not.

The stats were for refusals at point of entry, not visa refusals.

tht

Good US stats here: pages to look at are 63, 79, 98:

http://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/fil...is_yb_2013.pdf

By my calculation maybe 0.043% UK VW rejections, so about .42 / 1,000

S Folinsky

General comment: a Visa Waiver refusal of admission does NOT count as a formal "removal."

On those seven times, how long was each visit? OP's GF may actually have a positive immigration history.

BritInParis

A visa doesn't guarantee entry - the immigration officer still has the right to refuse entry. I would also expect a number of those refused were travelling on forged or counterfeit documentation.