Status update by HatulBitzot

The friendliest place on the web for anyone with an RV or an interest in RVing!
If you have answers, please help by responding to the unanswered posts.

HatulBitzot

Member
Joined
Apr 26, 2014
Posts
23
It is about time for some update; we arrived to Florida by mid February and bought a class C 28f RV from Cruise America. It drives OK but we are still in a process of retrofitting it from a rental unit to a privately owned RV. We are on the road, utilizing our 6 months visa. We already toured the Everglades, St. Augustine, and the Naval Aviation museum in Pensacola Florida. We passed through Alabama at the gulf coast and now we are touring Mississippi?s state parks on our way to the great river itself.
We struggled for some time with communication issue and solved it by having a Verizon?s 4G LTE MIFI Jetpack with 10GB and Metro PCS phone with unlimited data. Till now the coverage of Verizon is slightly better than the Metro PCS 4G but the metro has unlimited data and it works well on 3G networks while the Jetpack is 4G only without the feature of fallback to 3G.
Still need travel insurance; I have coverage till mid May 2015 that I bought in my home, so I need to purchase coverage locally in the US for the rest of the time. 
The issue of traveling Canada after the US tour with our American RV and being able to return to the US for selling the unit after 4-6 months in Canada is still opened. We couldn?t get a definitive answer if we can re-enter the US after few month in Canada without leaving the continent first. We need it for completing our tour, selling the RV and returning home.
Will appreciate any confirmed information on this.
Beside this at least for the time being life is good.   
 
Leaving the "continent" should not be necessary, but the only real confirmation you will get will have to come from the USA Border and Immigration  folks. What we say won't confirm anything. I think the best way to handle it is to have some time still left on your current USA visa (say 1 month) before entering Canada. If your 6 months are up at the time you leave the USA for Canada, you are not likely to be re-admitted without starting the Visa process again from your home country. (I assume you have already obtained any required visa to enter Canada by applying from your home country beforehand.)

Buying travel (emergency medical) insurance while still away, may be problematic. I know my travel insurance provider stipulates I must purchase it while still at home and there is no possibility of purchasing it once over the border and the trip in question is underway.

As far as selling your USA registered RV in Canada, this should not be possible unless you imported it legally on entering and have payed the required taxes and licencing on import (if that is even possible for a visitor...)

JMHO and have a wonderful trip!!!!
 
There are links to the Customs & Border Protection web site here. Happy reading. Meanwhile, we had a prior discussion here.
 
Thanks for the assistance, We will go to Canada at least a month before our 6 months visa to the US expires. We intend to stay in Canada for about 5 months and then return to the US for selling the RV and returning home. We do not need a visa to Canada and we have a multiple entry visa to the US. We heard that it is not possible to enter again to the US unless the tourist left the Northern America continent first.
I do not know if this is still valid if we stay 5 months in Canada before returning to the US, I guess we will find out the answer on the border. 
 
You might wish to read this CBP article regarding visiting Canada while in the USA on a B1 or B2 visa. It says you can only re-enter the USA if you're in Canada no more than 30 days.
 
Just seen this post - we are 3 months ahead of you having gone from Vero Beach FL through Alabama, Mississippi, Texas, Arizona, S California and now in Sonoma tasting the wine! We have to be out of the US by the middle of May.
We aim to be out of Canada by the end of September as everyone says the RV parks close then as it is getting too cold.
Our problem with Canada/USA on the B2 visa is that we are going on a cruise to Alaska in June which is of course the US. I spoke to the CBP about entry etc and her reply was "I haven't a clue - it all depends on the officer at the border". So I said that if he had a row with his wife that morning and he is in a bad mood he may refuse entry - yep she said, every time you leave/enter you set the bar higher!
If it came to the worst we would have to fly out of Canada to the UK or Aus and fly back into the US then go into Canada to pick up the rig.
With regards to insurance we couldn't get long enough coverage in the UK and none would let you extend from the US; we ended up buying it in Aus through Virgin and they will let us extend while over here.
We loved Arizona because of the country and the fewer people (less idiots on the road), California is prettier but much busier. Looking forward to seeing Oregon and Washington.
Will let you know how we go on in Alaska.
 
We have been in Canada a month now after crossing the border at Blaine on the 10th May 2 days before our 6 months in the US expired. The crossing was no problem although we only realised 3 weeks prior that you are only allowed to take 2 bottles of wine each into Canada. As we were stocked up with our favourite Tasmanian sparkling wine and lovely reds from the Napa and Sonoma Valley there was a lot of serious drinking done! At the moment you cannot take raw poultry or eggs into Canada which we complied with by boiling all the eggs first; typically the border guard carefully checked we didn't have any poultry etc but didn't even ask about alcohol!!
Now the crux of the tourist's problem - we had the Hyundai toad that we bought in Florida serviced in Vancouver and they found a worn wheel bearing that they couldn't fix because an American warranty isn't honoured in Canada. The nearest dealer in the US was just across the border in Bellingham and they agreed to do the work. Yesterday we set off with all our evidence from the dealer as to why we wanted to cross the border, the receipt showing that our RV was in a park in Canada, we had tickets to go on an Alaskan cruise from Vancouver next week and tickets back to the UK from Orlando in December.
The guard at the crossing was fine but told us we had to go for a secondary inspection at the main office. There things started to get very sketchy. We were told "you have used up your 6 months allowance in the US and you can't just go into Canada and then set the clock again for a further 6 months; you have to go home and re-enter the US again". We explained we were going on a cruise and hoping to go back into the US in early October as we understood you only needed to be out of the country for a resonable length of time. He shook his head and said you will have problems getting into Alaska and also getting into the US again in October without going home first, there are no regulatons allowing me to renew your visa - take a seat. He then conferred with 2 colleagues and we saw much shaking of heads and eventually he told us to come back where his supervisor was waiting. He confirmed that we were not abiding by the rules of the visa by going into Canada and not going home but it was entirely at the discretion of the guard who was questioning us - take a seat.
After a worried few minutes we were called again and he reiterated we were not abiding by the rules of the visa but previously he had been in the RV industry for 20 years and understood we probably didn't fully understand the visa requirements; as he believed our story and also didn't want to spoil our cruise he was going to grant us a 6 months I94 and charged us $12.
We thankfully paid, got the repair completed in Bellingham and stocked up with Kerrygold butter, Trader Joe's Belgium chocolate and Roederer sparkling wine!
The rider to this is that the friends accompanying us on the cruise live in the UK but have a condo in Florida. They fly into the US about 6 times a year, sometimes with only a couple of weeks between leaving and entering and never have any problems with their visas at the incoming desks... but they do have return air tickets to show them.  I know this is only our experience but yet again it does show that there is no definitive interpretation of the visa rule and it's entirely up to who you get on the day!
 
Sorry to hear of your car problems but... I think your Hyundai dealer was in error!!. You car was still licensed in the USA, (I assume), and thus you were simply tourists in Canada and the warranty should have applied unless Hyundai has a different policy to most other manufacturers.

When the manufacturers or Canadian dealerships deny warranties on USA cars it is usually because the car was purchased new and IMPORTED into Canada, which you did not do!! This practice has been around for several years now in order to try and discourage Canadians from buying and importing much cheaper NEW cars into Canada. As an aside, this practice does not USUALLY apply to used cars, nor should it apply to tourists.

RV dealers have tried to do the same thing but they base their arguments on the USA RV's not meeting Canadian standards such as CSA or electrical stuff. RV's built for import into Canada  are built side by side with their US counterparts but they do sport a CSA sticker. (There are very few actually built here)

They fly into the US about 6 times a year, sometimes with only a couple of weeks between leaving and entering and never have any problems with their visas at the incoming desks...

Although I am not familiar with the terms of a Brit Visa to enter the USA, they are likely allowed to accumulate up to 180 or so days in a given year, similar to Canadians (who do not require a formal paper visa). I think the time in country simply accumulates and as long as the total does not exceed that 180 days they are ok.

As you said, it all depends on the agent you meet on entering or crossing back into the USA. But you were very close with only 2 days left, gone less than 30 days (without planning a longer stay in Canada) etc and you would have probably been out of luck in trying to enter Alaska, even without all the trials and tribulations of the car incident. But all is well that ends well, and they treated you very well in granting you that extension!!!

Have a good trip and enjoy both our beautiful countries
 
Although I am not familiar with the terms of a Brit Visa to enter the USA, they are likely allowed to accumulate up to 180 or so days in a given year ...

That's not the rule for non-Canadians. However, the rules continue to evolve, and I suggest folks read the latest from an official source. Here's a topic on the subject, including a few links to the CPB web site as a starting point.
 
Back
Top Bottom