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My friend is Bulgarian and is a European citizen. He has a Canadian ETA visa and he is travelling to Canada from Bulgaria. He has a four-hour layover in New York airport. He is confused about whether or not he needs a transit visa for the USA. He has no plans to go out of the New York airport.

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  • related, possible duplicate: travel.stackexchange.com/questions/108671/…
    – mkennedy
    Commented Nov 28, 2023 at 17:45
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    "He has no plans to go out of the New York airport." Irrelevant. Transiting in the US means entering the country: there is unfortunately no airside transit there.
    – dda
    Commented Nov 29, 2023 at 0:30

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All passengers traveling through the US will go through passport control in the US, and will need appropriate paperwork:

  • Either be a US citizen or US permanent resident
  • For citizens of countries eligible for the Visa Waiver Program (VWP), have an ESTA
  • Otherwise, they need a visa.

Bulgarians citizens are not eligible for the VWP, so they can't use the (quicker and cheaper) ESTA, they need an actual visa.

This is true even if they stay only a very short time, don't exit the airport, and have connecting flights: there is no "secure airside" transit in the US, everybody enters the US and then exits back again.

It is probably much easier if they change their flights to avoid the US.

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    "Otherwise, they need a visa." Nationals of some countries that are not part of the VWP don't need a visa to enter the US, including Canada, Palau, the Marshall Islands, and the Federated States of Micronesia.
    – user102008
    Commented Nov 29, 2023 at 0:17

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