Chile has been in the Visa Waiver Program since 2014 and remains its only Latin American member. Chilean citizens with an electronic passport and an approved ESTA can spend up to 90 days in the United States per visit.
90 days
Maximum stay per visit
2 years
ESTA validity
Multiple
Entries permitted
72 hours
Apply at least this far ahead
100% online
No embassy visit
Overview
Chile occupies a singular place in American travel policy. Since 2014 it has been the only country in Latin America whose citizens can visit the United States without a visa, a status its neighbours in Argentina, Brazil, Peru and Colombia do not share. For Chileans that turns a trip to Miami or New York into something booked like any other holiday.
The traffic is substantial. Families fly to Orlando for the parks and to Miami for shopping, professionals attend mining, wine and technology events from Las Vegas to San Francisco, students visit campuses, and a growing number of travellers use the summer break to see New York in the snow. Around all of it sits one requirement: an approved Electronic System for Travel Authorization before departure.
The ESTA is an online screening carried out by U.S. Customs and Border Protection and held against the passport number. LATAM, American, Delta and United verify it at check-in in Santiago. The waiver depends on continued confidence in how it is used, which is why American officers pay attention to the purpose of each visit and why the rules on work and length of stay are applied strictly.
At a glance
Eligibility
Chilean citizens need an ESTA for any visit to the United States made without a visa, whether for tourism, business, medical care or a connection to another country. It applies to arrivals by air and sea and at the land borders with Mexico and Canada. Children and babies require their own, and for a Chilean family that means one application for each passport.
Eligibility follows Chilean nationality, including for the many Chileans who live abroad in Argentina, Spain, Sweden, Australia or Canada. Foreign residents of Chile are assessed on their own passports, so a Venezuelan, Peruvian, Colombian or Haitian resident holding a Chilean identity card needs an American visa until they naturalise and obtain a Chilean passport.
Cuba is the point that catches Chileans most often. Varadero and Havana are well-established holiday destinations from Santiago, and anyone who has been in Cuba on or after 12 January 2021 is not eligible for the waiver. Chileans who also hold Cuban nationality, including naturalised citizens born on the island, are excluded as dual nationals whatever their travel record.
The other exclusions are less common in Chile but real. Presence since 1 March 2011 in Iran, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Yemen, Somalia, Sudan or North Korea ends eligibility, and Chile's large community of Syrian and Palestinian descent includes families who have visited relatives in Syria. A second nationality of Syria, Iran, Iraq, Sudan or North Korea has the same effect. In each case a visitor visa is the route.
Stay & validity
An ESTA linked to a Chilean passport is generally valid for two years and can be used for repeated visits of up to 90 days. Adult passports issued by the Registro Civil since early 2020 last ten years, while those issued before that lasted five, and minors still receive five-year documents. If the passport expires inside the two years, the authorisation ends on the same date.
Ninety days is the ceiling for each visit, and it includes time spent in Mexico, Canada or the neighbouring Caribbean islands along the way. A journey that combines Miami with Cancún or a Bahamas cruise is counted as a single stay. Trying to restart the period with a quick exit to a nearby country does not work.
Extensions do not exist under the waiver, and neither does switching to another status after arrival. That matters for Chileans tempted by a ski season in Colorado or a summer job at a resort, both of which need a proper exchange or work visa. It also matters for anyone visiting a partner or relatives for an open-ended period: an officer who doubts that you will leave can refuse entry.
Pricing
Live fees for Chilean passport holders, shown all-in — the US government charge and our service fee together, with nothing added later.
Your nationality is pre-selected as Chile
Requirements
Everything Chilean passport holders need before starting an application. The first five items apply to every applicant; the rest are specific to your nationality.
A biometric e-passport from a Visa Waiver Program country, carrying the chip symbol on its cover
A valid email address, which is where the decision is sent and which you should keep accessible while travelling
A credit or debit card to pay the government ESTA charge and our service fee together
Your home address, phone number and an emergency contact
Employer details and, if you have them, the address of where you are staying in the United States
Simple process
Four steps, entirely online, with our team checking every field before anything reaches U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
Enter your passport details exactly as printed, your contact and employment information, and answer the eligibility questions. Most applicants finish in about fifteen minutes.
Our team checks your passport number, name spelling, dates and declarations against CBP requirements before anything is submitted.
Your application goes to U.S. Customs and Border Protection with the government charge paid, and we track its status until a decision is issued.
There is nothing to stick in your passport. The authorisation is held electronically against your passport number, and the airline verifies it when you check in.
Applications from Chile are generally decided fast, though some are placed in pending status for further checks, and the official recommendation is to apply at least 72 hours before the flight. Santiago is on or close to East Coast time for much of the year, so there is no time-zone cushion to rely on when a decision is still outstanding.
The pressure points are the summer holidays from mid-December to late February, the two-week winter break in July and the Fiestas Patrias week in September. Late November has become another, as Chileans travel to Miami and Orlando for the sales after Thanksgiving. Applying as soon as fares are booked avoids competing with thousands of others in the final days.
If the result is a refusal, the fallback is a B-1/B-2 visa through the embassy in Santiago, which involves an interview. Fewer Chileans have gone through that process since 2014, and appointment waits can be long. Travellers with a Cuban holiday in their recent past should start with the visa and not apply for an ESTA at all.
On arrival
An approved ESTA gets you on the plane. This is what happens once you land, and how to make the arrival as quick as possible.
Visa Waiver travellers are seen by U.S. Customs and Border Protection at the first American airport they land at, even when connecting onward. The officer takes a photograph and, for most adults, fingerprints.
There is no paper form to fill in on the aircraft. Your arrival record, the I-94, is created digitally and shows the date by which you must leave. You can look it up online afterwards.
Expect to be asked where you are staying, for how long and what you do for a living. A return ticket and the address of your first night are usually all it takes.
Queues at the busiest gateways can run past an hour at peak arrival times. If you are connecting to a domestic flight, leave a generous margin, since you also reclaim and recheck your bags.
Getting there
Santiago's Arturo Merino Benítez Airport has nonstop flights to the main American hubs, with LATAM and the three large American airlines sharing the market. Miami is the principal gateway and the usual connecting point for Orlando and the Caribbean. Travellers from Antofagasta, Concepción, Puerto Montt and Punta Arenas fly to Santiago first.
Best time to go
The seasons are inverted, and Chilean travellers can use that to their advantage. The long summer holiday in January and February is winter in the north: New York, Chicago and Washington are cold, sometimes snowbound, and hotel rates there are at their lowest of the year. Florida, by contrast, is dry, sunny and comfortably warm, which is why January in Orlando and Miami is so popular.
The July winter break coincides with the American school summer. Theme parks have their longest queues, Florida is hot and thundery, and the hurricane season that lasts from June to November is under way. On the other hand the national parks of the West, from Yosemite to Yellowstone, are fully open, and California's coast offers a pleasant escape from the cold at home.
September's Fiestas Patrias holidays fall at an excellent moment. American children are back at school, prices drop after the first Monday of the month, and the weather in New York, Boston and the mountain states is at its most agreeable. The only caution is that September is also the peak of the Atlantic hurricane season for Florida and the Gulf.
Jet lag is barely a factor, which is unusual for a long-haul trip. Santiago is level with New York during the Chilean winter and two hours ahead in the Chilean summer, with a one-hour gap in the weeks between clock changes. Flights are mostly overnight, landing in Miami or New York early in the morning, so plan for a long first day and check the hotel's early check-in policy.
Avoid these
Refusals are rare, and almost always technical rather than substantive. These are the problems that come up most often on applications from Chile — we check for every one of them before submitting.
All-inclusive weeks in Varadero are a staple of Chilean travel agencies, and many people do not realise the consequence. A visit on or after 12 January 2021 makes the traveller ineligible for the waiver. An application that conceals it is a false statement; the honest answer leads to the visa route, which remains open.
Chileans are used to giving their RUN for everything, and it is printed on the passport alongside the document number. The American system needs the passport number. An authorisation issued against a RUN is attached to a passport that does not exist, and the airline will find nothing when it scans the real one.
Airline bookings often carry only the paternal surname, and applicants copy that habit into the form. The passport shows both, and so does its machine-readable zone. GONZÁLEZ ROJAS entered as GONZALEZ alone may not be matched to the passport record, so write the two surnames as printed.
Ski resorts and summer camps recruit young Chileans through official exchange programmes that come with their own visa. Arriving on an ESTA to take such a job, or to look for one, breaches the conditions of the waiver, and officers at Miami and Dallas are alert to it.
Travel to a restricted country
Anyone who has been in Iran, Iraq, North Korea, Sudan, Syria, Libya, Somalia or Yemen on or after 1 March 2011, or in Cuba on or after 12 January 2021, is generally not eligible for the Visa Waiver Program and needs a visa instead.
A previous visa refusal or overstay
An earlier refusal of a US visa, a denied entry or a past overstay must be declared. Each one commonly leads to an ESTA being refused and the traveller being directed to apply for a visa.
Passport details that do not match
A single wrong character in the passport number, or an expiry date typed in the wrong order, produces an authorisation the airline cannot find at check-in.
Conditions
These conditions are set under the Visa Waiver Program and do not vary by nationality. The 90-day limit and the passport-linking rule catch out a great many otherwise well-planned trips.
Your authorisation is held electronically against the passport number you enter. If you renew or replace that passport, change your name or change citizenship, the ESTA no longer applies and you need a new one.
Every person travelling under the Visa Waiver Program needs their own ESTA, including babies and children, each linked to that traveller's own e-passport.
An approved ESTA generally lasts two years from the date of authorisation, or until the passport it is linked to expires, whichever comes first.
Within its validity you can make repeated trips. Each stay can be up to 90 days, and time spent in Canada, Mexico or the nearby Caribbean islands during a trip counts towards those 90 days.
A Visa Waiver stay cannot be extended and cannot be converted into another immigration status from inside the United States. Anyone who needs longer must apply for a visa before travelling.
An ESTA lets you board a carrier bound for the United States. Admission is decided by a CBP officer at the port of entry, who can ask about your plans, your funds and your ties to home.
Consular services
The United States has one diplomatic mission in Chile, the embassy in the Las Condes district of Santiago, which serves the whole country from Arica to Magallanes. Chileans travelling on an ESTA do not need to contact it. It is where applicants from the regions must travel for visa interviews when they intend to study, work or stay beyond 90 days, or when the waiver does not apply to them.
FAQs
The questions Chilean passport holders ask most often about travelling to the United States.
No, Chilean citizens do not need a visa for visits of up to 90 days, because Chile has been part of the Visa Waiver Program since 2014. They must hold an approved ESTA linked to an electronic passport before boarding. A visa is required for work, study for credit, longer stays, or if the traveller is ineligible for the waiver.
Not if the trip was on or after 12 January 2021. Travellers who have been in Cuba since that date are not eligible for the Visa Waiver Program and need to apply for a B-1/B-2 visa at the embassy in Santiago. Visits to Cuba before that date do not affect eligibility on their own.
Yes. Enter your paternal and maternal surnames together in the family name field, exactly as they appear in your passport, without accents and with ñ written as n. Your given names go in the first name field in full. The entry should mirror the machine-readable lines at the bottom of the photo page.
No. The RUN is your national identity number and appears on the passport for reference, but the passport has its own document number, which is the one the ESTA is linked to. Use the document number in the passport field, and enter the RUN only where a national identification number is requested.
Up to 90 days per visit. The authorisation normally remains valid for two years, or until the passport expires if earlier, and allows multiple entries. Side trips to Mexico, Canada or the nearby Caribbean are included in the 90 days, and the stay cannot be extended from inside the country.
No. The identity card is accepted for travel within much of South America but not for the United States. You need a Chilean electronic passport, which the Registro Civil has issued since 2013, and the ESTA must be approved against that passport before you check in.
Yes, every child needs a separate authorisation tied to their own passport, however young. Remember too that Chilean rules require notarised permission when a minor leaves the country without both parents. That is checked by the PDI at the airport in Santiago and is separate from the American requirement.
No. Seasonal work programmes for university students run on an exchange visitor visa arranged through a sponsor before you leave Chile. The ESTA does not allow employment of any kind. It is suitable for tourism, family visits, business meetings, transit and medical treatment only.
Your nationality is already set to Chile. Complete the form in about fifteen minutes, and our team will check every detail before it reaches CBP.
Other nationalities
Routes, passport rules and the practical details differ by country. Here are the guides for other Visa Waiver Program nationalities.
