Denied
I’m curious if anyone has had anything similar happen with NEXUS, because I’m completely puzzled by my denial.
I applied in February and received conditional approval in May. Between May and August I completed both interviews. I did the U.S. interview at SeaTac and the Canadian interview at Vancouver Airport.
Nothing unusual came up during either interview. In fact, during my Canadian interview I was told that I should receive my NEXUS card in a few weeks, so I left thinking everything had been approved.
Less than 10 minutes later, I got a notification that there had been an update to my Trusted Traveller account. I logged in and saw that my NEXUS application had been denied. The only reason given was essentially:
“Other. You do not meet program eligibility requirements at this time.”
I have no criminal record and have never been arrested, so I’m trying to figure out what could possibly have triggered it.
The only possibilities I can come up with are that maybe there was some very minor customs or agriculture issue when I was in my 20s that I genuinely don’t remember. Maybe coming back through the U.S. from Mexico with something I wasn’t supposed to have, not declaring a piece of fruit, something along those lines. We’re talking around 20 years ago, so I honestly have no recollection of anything significant.
The other thing I’m wondering about is my spouse.
My spouse has an old simple assault conviction from roughly 25 years ago that was later pardoned in Canada. For many years after that, they travelled to the U.S. without any problem. Then about five years ago, they suddenly started getting sent to secondary almost every time we crossed.
On one trip I was travelling through the U.S. to Mexico for a medical procedure and had brought a fairly large amount of cash with me, although it was below the $10,000 declaration threshold. At the border they unexpectedly asked how much cash I had. I answered truthfully that it was under $10,000, and we were sent to secondary. That happened around the same period my spouse started having repeated border issues.
Eventually, on a later trip when my spouse travelled without me, they were found inadmissible to the U.S. They are now in the process of applying for a U.S. nonimmigrant waiver of inadmissibility through an attorney.
The reason this particularly caught my attention is that during my U.S. NEXUS interview, the officer specifically asked who my current spouse was and asked for their last name. When I gave the name, the officer responded with something like, “That’s right.” Nothing further was said about it and I wasn’t told there was any issue.
I called the Canadian NEXUS side after receiving the denial and was told that the denial had come from the U.S. side.
So now I’m wondering whether this is some ancient customs or agriculture incident I’ve completely forgotten about, something connected to my spouse’s U.S. admissibility history, or something completely different.
What confuses me most is that I had already been conditionally approved, completed the U.S. interview without being told there was a problem, and was literally told at my Canadian interview that my card would arrive, only to be denied minutes later.
Has anyone had a similar experience, particularly a denial under “Other. You do not meet program eligibility requirements at this time” after conditional approval and both interviews? And if you requested reconsideration, did you ever find out what the actual issue was?