uuggh - Almost Drama at LAX

[perfect 39]

So, having planned this trip for a few months to visit his friend in Brazil (to see if they want to move forward as a boyfriend/girlfriend relationship, my son, who has dual British and US citizenship got to LAX and was almost turned away!

We had specifically checked and verified that traveling on an English passport he didn't need a visa to travel to Brazil. Printed out his boarding pass at home and was told at the airport he needed to validate his documents by scanning them through the machine (only baggage check now has a live person!). So of course....the magic machine would not accept his British passport and keep saying only US ID accepted! Of course he does the sensible thing and asks a human "assistant" who says never mind - use your US passport....which then prints a boarding pass saying "International Visa required".......so we ask the guy twice if this will be a problem because he doesn't need a visa with his UK passport (would need a visa for US passport). The guy categorically says it's not a problem and looks at me as though I have six heads when I ask him if he is sure!

Get to bag check and the attendant says he can't check him in because there is no visa in his passport and he needs one. So we go through the whole story again.....guy says sorry no can do - so we ask him how we can overcome the problem because he is a dual citizen and traveling on his UK passport absolutely definitely does NOT need a visa! After hooing and haaing and giving us very dirty looks he stomps off, plays with said magic machine and finally gets a valid boarding pass which says "travel docs ok"....so no visa needed.

Horrible start to the day!! Hope he gets where he needs to be without any more hiccups. First time traveling alone to a country where he only knows one person and doesn't speak the language - doesn't need additional stress!!

[Mollie09 1,543]

I'm sorry his experience was terrible, but I'm not sure why this happened.

My husband is a dual US/German citizen, and when we go to Brazil together he uses his US passport to leave the US and his German passport to enter Brazil without a visa, and the opposite on the way back. It's worked every time, and we've done it quite a few times. He just checks in with his US passport, then goes to the counter for "document verification" with his German passport.

It's odd that this happened to him, but not likely to happen again.

[Ontarkie 14,445]

~~Moved to Off Topic, from Adjustment of Status from Work, Student, & Tourist Visas - This is about a dual US/UK citizen who traveled to Brazil, not an AOS topic~~