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From the United States in Canada


From the United States in Canada

If you are travelling to Canada from the United States and you are not a permanent resident of either country you need to be careful to satisfy the U.S. authorities on any subsequent trip that you have not exceeded their limits on stays in North America. Your time in Canada counts towards your maximum allowed United States stay if you are returning to the U.S. prior to your departure from North America.
  • If you are returning to the US in this trip, keep your visa documents. Do not hand over your US visa or visa waiver card (I-94 or I-94W) to border control. You can enter the US multiple times during the time allocated to your visa (for Western tourists, normally 90 days), but you need to have the immigration document as well to validate the visa. If you come back from the US without that document, you will not only have to apply again for a visa or visa waiver but also will also need to satisfy U.S. immigration of the validity of your trip (meaning to show them that you will not intend on immigrating there).
  • If your default US time is going to run out while you are in Canada, and you want to return to the US direct from Canada, you need to apply for a US visa with a longer time period (eg B-1/B-2, or a C-1 transit visa) before your first trip through the US. For example, if you are going to stay in Canada for six months, and you transit through the US on a visa waiver, then the US will regard your six months in Canada as not allowing you to return to the US without leaving North America first, as you have stayed more than 90 days in North America in total. Note that in this scenario, you have not done anything wrong by visiting the US and then staying in Canada for a long time, simply that the US will not allow you to return directly from Canada, you have to reset their clock by leaving North America. Visa waiver travelers may be able to avoid this by returning their I-94W (green) form to their airline upon departing the United States, or to the Canadian immigration inspector if entering Canada by land; since the US has no outbound immigration check, it's up to the traveler to remember this.
  • If you are intending to leave North America entirely without returning to the United States on this trip, return any visa documents at the time of leaving the US for Canada. This means handing over your I-94 or I-94W card to airline staff at the check-in counter if departing by air, or to the Canadian immigration inspector if departing by land. If you do not, you will need to prove to the United States that you didn't overstay in order to be admitted on future trips (the US CBP website has information on how to correct this mistake).

  • The Most Frequently Asked Travel Questions about Canada


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    Canada Travel Guide from Wikitravel. Many thanks to all Wikitravel contributors. Text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0, images are available under various licenses, see each image for details.

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