Do I risk breaching the rules of VWP if I stay in Mexico with only occasional trips to the US over a 120+ day period?

score:8

Accepted answer

but under VWP the clock keeps running, correct?

No. Someone who has been in Mexico (or Canada or the Caribbean) may be readmitted for the balance of their original 90-day admission. But they can also be given a new 90-day admission, and, if they enter more than 90 days after the first admission, that is the only way they can be admitted under the VWP.

What are her options for extending her trip, where she is primarily staying in Mexico, without breaching the VWP 90 day rules?

Just transit through the US when she's ready to go back to New Zealand.

Upvote:4

Short visits to adjacent countries and neighbouring islands do not reset the VWP clock. The goal is to avoid visa runs, where someone using the VWP would come to the US, stay nearly 90 days, hop across the border for a couple of days (or hours), and come back for another nearly-90-day stay (rinse and repeat).

Longer visits will reset the clock and the visitor will get a new 90-day limit.

The difficulty is that contrary to some other rules which are extremely precise (like the Schengen 90/180 day rule), “short” and “long” are left to the appreciation of the CBP officer stamping the visitor in.

But in your case I don’t think there’s any doubt at all given the numbers involved.

Don’t know the precise dates, but even without the short/long distinction, it is likely that even if her next stay in the US is still counted in her original I-94 (which is very unlikely IMHO, and which can be checked by looking at the stamp as well as the I-94 site after her admission), when she leaves after that and comes back months later she will definitely be out of the original limit, so she should get a new I-94.

We’ve had similar questions which where edge cases, but here it should really take a very angry CBP officer for her to have any issue.

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