Travel to the United States with Australian international travel exemption

Hi all

Can anyone plz advice me on i have got an exemption to travel to Nepal.. before pandemic i was planning to visit friend in united state i got b1b2 visa as well and all these things happen and i couldnt travel as i got the exemption for Nepal now can i go to united state to see my friend and his family and go back to Nepal there but i have not got exemption to travel to US .. i am just worried that Australian border force gonna stop me at the airport

Thanks

If your exit permit was to travel to Nepal only and not the USA you might have issues with border force in Australia.

If you were traveling to a country where to only way you could enter that country was via the US (think other counties in the Americas or Caribbean) you might have a reasonable argument to make to Aussie border force if they questioned you and it might be possible for you to spend a few day in the US whist waiting to connect to your final destination (especially if the destination you are trying to get to has limited flight options).

Personally, based on what you have said above, if you have applied for a permit to travel to the US and they didn't approve it, border force/Aussie Government, probable decided that your purpose for travel to the US didn’t meet the current exit requirements, this will hopefully change soon, but until then it’s probably better not to risk it.

If you did get approval for you to go to Nepal, and you then also went to the US once you arrived in Nepal, you could experience issues in the future including upon your return to Australia. Especially if you only reason for traveling to the US was for tourism/seeing friends. If there is another reason for your travel to be US beyond tourism/seeing friends such as the approved exit criteria outline by the government, it would probably be better to apply for another exit permit and travel on a separate trip, it’s better to be safe rather than sorry. The government can see where you travel to if you use an Australian Passport and if you make a false declaration upon your return to Australia more issues could arise too.

Its entirety possible that everything could be fine or the rules could change whist you are overseas, but it just depends on your personal threshold to risk and your personal threshold to the possible issues you might face with the government if you make a false declaration or misuse your exit permit.

@planesa380

I agree with most of what you wrote except that whether a traveller can get into trouble if they had return from another country different from what they previously departed for using exemption.

Unless the border force want to audit each and everyone of the returning travellers for this specific transgression (not a difficult thing to do electronically in identification, but a time consuming and costly matter in terms of personnel for interviewing), it does not change how every travellers (Aussie citizens, permanent residents and international VIPs) need to do which is 14 days supervised hotel quarantine paid for by the travellers, the previous travel history made an iota of difference to this rule as far as I can tell, since even NZ arrivals also still need this quarantine bar a few compassionate reasonS fast drying up since some of these exemptions were later found to be COVID-19 positive.

Ok, maybe some VIPs can get exempt from that quarantine bit. I assume Kerry Stokes does not read this column (he probably hires someone else to read it for him!)

Keeping in mind what international flights you depart with may not have a return flight by the time you want come back, or have a economy/ business class seat made available on that airline, one can argue they have to transit via another country to get a flight back.

Of course, it is going to be a hard sell to anyone why they have to fly from Nepal via US to come back to Oz whereas they could have gone via Middle East where some of the state owned carriers are still flying to Australia as passengers flights