I have the opposite experience in that I'm an American who has lived in the UK and have had visa issues in that direction. At some point my visa was expiring a

I have the opposite experience in that I'm an American who has lived in the UK and have had visa issues in that direction. At some point my visa was expiring and I applied for a new one, but my application was rejected. So I left the country under my own volition. For the next two years, I visited the UK regularly (6 times total) for 2-4 week stints to see my longtime girlfriend, friends, and perform various activities related to a business I started with a friend in the UK (I had lived in the UK for 6 years). The most recent time I tried to visit the UK, I was visiting my girlfriend before Christmas for two weeks. Already had an onward flight to the US booked for two weeks after my arrival, on an airline + route I had flown quite frequently. That is to say: none of the circumstances were different than all the other times I had visited the UK in the past two years. This time, however, I was denied entry and held in detention for nearly 18 hours, having to book a same day flight back to the states (because my existing onward flight was out of a different airport and could not rebook). My only crime was that when they denied a visa application, I left when they asked me to (which is another story about how hard they actually made it for me to leave in the first place). --- On the other hand, my British girlfriend just got an ESTA to come visit me in the states. She had to stay in Mexico for two weeks as she was coming from Europe, but she's here now.