TheESTA USA is a travel authorization allowing certain tourists to travel to the United States for a period set by the American government. This authorization enables many travelers with a valid passport to visit the United States of America without having to apply for a conventional visa.
In this article, find out if you are entitled to apply for ESTA to travel to the USA, and how to go about obtaining it as quickly as possible.
Who can apply for ESTA to travel to the USA?
Before finding out how you can apply for ESTA, it’s important to know if you’re eligible.
In fact, certain conditions must be met for travelers to be exempted from US visa requirements. Here are the various eligibility criteria that tourists must meet in order to apply for an ESTA and travel to the USA:
- have a passport (biometric or electronic);
- be a citizen of a country participating in the Visa Waiver Program;
- traveling to the U.S. for tourism, business or transit before your final destination;
- plan a stay in the USA of up to 90 days;
- arrive on American soil by air or sea;
- not represent a risk or threat to U.S. homeland security.
The authorization was introduced to guarantee national security under the VWP. The ESTA is one of the security measures put in place to ascertain the identity and motivations of travelers before they even set foot on American soil. Find out now how to apply for ESTA.
How do I apply for an ESTA to travel to the USA?
Applying for an ESTA is fairly straightforward, as it doesn’t require a trip to the American embassy and takes very little time, unlike applying for a USA visa.
To apply for an ESTA, you need to fill in an online form. The form to fill in (ESTA form) can be found on the official U.S. government website. If you’d like help applying for an ESTA document, many private sites offer to collect your personal information, verify it and forward it to the American authorities on your behalf.
Regardless of the method used, the information to be communicated to the U.S. government relates to the traveler (personal information and passport data) as well as his or her trip to the U.S. (local address and emergency contact).
Please note that the passport is very important in your ESTA application, so any input errors will be detected by the electronic systems. It is also important that the passport used for your stay in the USA is the same passport used for the ESTA application. In the event of a new passport, a new authorization request is required.
The U.S. authorities will return your application within 72 hours. If you receive your ESTA, you should know that you can use it for the full duration of the document’s validity, i.e. two years, or until your e-passport or biometric passport expires, whichever comes first.
Has your ESTA request been refused? There’s no need to panic. When applying for ESTA authorization, check that you have correctly filled in the fields on the form. The most common error concerns the passport number. If you notice a mistake, your application will probably be rejected because of this typo. In this case, please wait 10 days before submitting a new ESTA application. You will, of course, have to pay the application fee again.
If you are unable to apply for an ESTA document, you can apply for a U.S. visa through the consular services of the U.S. embassy.
