Acting assistant secretary of US Homeland Security, Lauren Bis, previously told the BBC that the tightening of granting ESTAs was because “the Trump administration is enforcing immigration laws”.<\/p>\n
“Under the Visa Waiver Program, all ESTA applications are continuously vetted against law enforcement and security databases,” she said.<\/p>\n
“Travellers must provide complete and truthful information, including all criminal history.”<\/p>\n
Michael Wright said the late U-turn had left him feeling “very raw” – as well as thousands of pounds out of pocket.<\/p>\n
He said: “You’re talking about \u00a34,500 to \u00a35,000 and the only thing I’m ever going to get the money back on is the match tickets.<\/p>\n
“But at this point I don’t even want to take the money back on them \u2013 I’ll probably just give them away.”<\/p>\n
However, he still insists on “taking the positives” from his World Cup experience.<\/p>\n
“I made the trip home and spent about two-and-a-half weeks back in Scotland with all the family who I obviously don’t get to see every day.<\/p>\n
“Now I’ll just go back to Australia and watch the games with my mates.”<\/p>\n
A spokesperson for the UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office said: “The US government sets ESTA and visa requirements. We encourage applicants to follow instructions set out by the US Embassy.<\/p>\n
“We continue to engage closely with the US embassy regarding entry requirements for British nationals traveling to the World Cup.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Acting assistant secretary of US Homeland Security, Lauren Bis, previously told the BBC that the tightening of granting…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":631189,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":["post-631188","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/631188","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=631188"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/631188\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/631189"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=631188"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=631188"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=631188"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}