This is for an electronic travel authorization, which the US, Australia and Canada already require of all visitors. It's simple and takes minutes online, hardly a 'visa.'
> It's simple and takes minutes online, hardly a 'visa.'
Except when it doesn't. If your visa waiver is refused then you have to visit the US embassy to get a "traditional" visa, and sometimes that's not even possible to get.
Yes, the ESTA and now the US citizens have to do something similar to enter the EU. I hope they also need to pay for it when they just have a stopover in the EU just like us in the US. I am fully on board with this as a EU citizen
as a US citizen from a 'shithole' country, I fully support it, lets all US/EU citizens experience what we all had to. Fill in a ton of papers, prove that you're a human too and get rejected.
Australia ya, but Canada? The last time I visited Canada by car, I didn’t need electronic travel authorization, so there must be some exemption rather than all visitors.
The situation is similar for ESTA and travel to the United States. ESTA is required for travel by plane and ship, but not over land. If you are planning to apply for admission to the US under the visa waiver program at a crossing of the land borders with Canada or Mexico, you don’t need ESTA.
(There are a few ferries between British Columbia and Washington state that are also treated as a land border.)
Interesting, I misunderstood the info I got while traveling there. The way the border agents phrased it I required esta as well as an additional form, but the website I checked now says I wouldn't have needed the esta as you said!
For me, arriving at the US by land was by far a worse experience than arriving by air, as my passport was taken until they had time to process me, waiting in a room i was not allowed to leave, then filling out an additional form and paying additionally. Contrasted to arriving by air "do you have esta? -> yes -> have fun" at the immigration.
Last week I flew from New York to Montreal, and I didn't have to get a travel authorization or pay a fee. I just showed up with my passport, all very easy.
In practice it would probably be best to use the terminology of the country you are visiting. A visa is a document that says “Visa” on it. Things like US ESTA, Schengen ETIAS, Canadian eTA, etc., are not called visas by the jurisdictions that issue them. If a country makes it easy to apply for visas online without an interview, and calls that a “visa,” then it’s a visa.
Some other countries don’t have advance electronic approval, but do distinguish between visa-on-arrival and visa-free transit, and it would be advisable to follow each country’s terminology. Australia does refer to its ETA and eVisitor programs as a “visa” in official literature.
Otherwise you could end up confused and say the wrong thing. For example if you arrive at the border and the officer asks “Do you have a visa?” and you answer “Yes” but only have a travel authorization, you have suddenly made a false statement and could be in trouble.
Well, with centralised IT systems, it doesn't need to be a physical sticker on your passport but rather an authorization number associated with your passport number (more secure than relying on someone not faking the sticker). But the vetting process is still there. Fundamentally isn't it the exact same thing (a sort of an electronic helmet)?
Wikipedia almost agrees with you, but the "on a passport" part doesn't connect.
>A visa (from the Latin charta visa, meaning "paper that has been seen")[1] is a conditional authorization granted by a country to a foreigner, allowing them to enter, remain within, or to leave that country.
Why does it matter to you if it goes into the passport or not? If I recall correctly my F1 Visa for the US didn't go into my passport either, but was a separate document.
When I hear "visa" I think of mailing something to a consulate or going there personally for an application, paying a good chunk of money and waiting weeks to hopefully get approval.
I guess the point is that they need different words for this two-tier system. If they currently use "visa" to mean the kind where you have to show up for an interview and have something glued into your passport, then saying this is not-a-visa makes some sense.
There tends to be a massive difference between the effort required to get a visa, and the effort required to get ESTA.
ESTA roughly as annoying as booking a plane ticket if you don't already have an account with a pre-filled profile, and usually granted instantly.
A visa request, even if done online, can easily cost you many hours filling out forms, scanning documents, etc., and often takes weeks to process.
It's also much rarer for an ESTA to be denied than for a visa to be denied.
There's a reason why passportindex.org distinguishes mostly between "real" visa requirements, and mostly pro-forma stuff like ESTA, visa-on-arrival etc.
Plenty of countries have tourist visas that you can easily get online for a small amount of money. Exactly like the US's not-a-visa. For example Turkey's tourist visa costs $20.
Except when it doesn't. If your visa waiver is refused then you have to visit the US embassy to get a "traditional" visa, and sometimes that's not even possible to get.