Have you ever overstayed a holiday visa in the US? Check before you book a return trip, as you may be turned back, writes James Fitzgerald.

It would have been the holiday of a lifetime: a trip to Hawaii, where Louise, a 48-year-old from south Dublin, and her friends would bask in the sunshine of the Pacific islands, 2,000 miles west of San Francisco. Their flights and hotels were booked and paid for. All that was left to do was file through US immigration control at Shannon Airport.

Louise's friends were waved through. But she was taken aside and told she would not be going to Honolulu or anywhere else in the US that day, as she had overstayed her welcome on a trip to California nine years ago. It didn't matter that she'd been to New York last year. It didn't matter that this was meant to be a dream holiday.

The US is getting strict about immigration. After September 11th and the war in Iraq it is scrutinising intending visitors more carefully, cracking down on anybody it sees as a potential risk to security or who has broken the rules in the past.

The shift has already affected Irish students who applied for J1 visas this year, with lengthy processing times threatening to derail their plans to spend the summer in the US. It also has implications for the thousands of students and other Irish people who have overstayed their visas in the past, particularly in the 1980s, when the economy at home was in such poor shape: their door into the US is being pushed shut.

Their flouting of immigration law now disqualifies them from travelling under the exemption scheme that lets citizens of 27 countries temporarily enter the US without the form-filling of old. "If you violate the terms of the visa-waiver programme you can never travel on it again, and for all future travel you need a visa," says Morgan Kulla of the US embassy in Dublin.

Louise had travelled to California on a three-month holiday visa in 1994 to visit her sister, who had hurt her back and needed help looking after her newborn twin daughters. She was then granted a six-month extension. But a year later Louise was still in the US. "An extra week led to a month, and a month led to a year, and eventually I ended up staying three years. I do understand what I did was wrong, but then I had been back last year without a problem," says Louise, who is thousands of euro out of pocket for the trip to Hawaii that never was. And with family still living in the US, she is concerned that she may never be allowed back there.

She says her attempts to contact the US embassy to discuss any future trip have been fruitless; what's more, the helpline for visa queries has a 1580 number, meaning it costs €1.90 a minute to call.

The embassy is unapologetic, pointing out that it is not the law but its enforcement that has changed. The closer scrutiny of visa applications is part of the State Department and other government agencies' "extensive and ongoing review of visa-issuing practices as they relate to our national security", says Kulla. "Things are changing all time in this current climate. There are different processing forms and checks, and there are new worldwide regulations, but the law is the same."

The effect is to make the process far more laborious. "For many applicants, a personal-appearance interview is required as a standard part of visa processing," says Kulla. "Applicants affected by these procedures are informed of the need for additional screening at the time they submit their applications and are being advised to expect delays. However, the time needed for adjudication of individual cases will continue to be difficult to predict. We recommend that individuals build in ample time before planned travel when seeking to obtain a visa."

The slow processing of this year's J1 visas created a significant backlog - and even prompted Edward Kennedy, the US senator, to call for more staff to be allocated to the Dublin embassy, to make sure the students could get over to begin work on time. Hundreds of Irish-American businesses in Kennedy's home state of Massachusetts depend on the imported labour for the busy summer months.

"A lot of pressure was put to bear in the US and we worked out a system with the embassy to get everything through as quickly as possible," says Seona MacRéamoinn of USIT travel agency, which deals with the largest number of Irish students on the J1 programme. The backlog has almost been cleared, it says.

But even though the rules are being enforced more strictly, being Irish still has its advantages: we can be thankful, for example, that we are not from one of the countries that the Americans claim sponsor global terror networks.

The Enhanced Border Security and Visa Entry Reform Act 2002, which President Bush signed into law last month, means Washington will no longer hand out visas - even holiday visas - to anyone from North Korea, Cuba, Iran, Iraq, Syria or Libya unless Colin Powell or one of his successors as Secretary of State determines "that such alien does not pose a threat to the safety or national security of the United States". In other words, they are guilty of being threats to security until proven innocent.

The embassy in Dublin is keen to stress that the US is not entirely off limits to new immigrants, however. Irish people can still apply for immigrant visas under the same categories as before, and neither the war on terrorism nor the downturn in the US economy has had any direct effect on the number of visas issued, it says.

Under the Diversity Visa Lottery scheme, the US also hands out 55,000 green cards a year to applicants from approved countries around the world. But with 6.2 million valid applications arriving in the processing office in Kentucky this year alone, the word "lottery" is well employed.

So although it may take longer than ever for your visa to be processed, and you can be sure immigration officials will run every conceivable security check on you, the US is still open to people who want a new life on the other side of the Atlantic.

The door may look shut, but it is not bolted. "The welcome mat is still out," says Kulla.

Rocky Mountain highs

An increasing number of the students who strap on backpacks at this time of year are heading for Canada, home of the Klondike gold rush, ice hockey and wilderness parks with names such as Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump. Now other people will also get the chance to spend more than a few weeks exploring the world's second- largest country, thanks to a one-year-visa scheme announced by the Irish and Canadian governments last month. They may find it a home from home.

"Canadians are very similar to the Irish," says 19-year-old Joanne Weadick from Dublin, who arrived in Toronto a few weeks ago with her cousin Joanne Ferguson to look for a summer job. "When you're in a bar they'll come up and talk to you like any Irish person would."

Toronto and Vancouver are the two most popular destinations for Irish students who apply through USIT for working visas, which allow them to remain in Canada for 12 months. The Student Work Abroad Programme arranges the first night's accommodation, helps them get social-insurance numbers and tells them where to look for jobs. It says most of the 90 Irish students who have just arrived found work in shops, in pubs and even on schooners on Lake Ontario.

City lovers go to Toronto, Canada's economic powerhouse; outdoor enthusiasts such as David Hampton prefer the west-coast city of Vancouver, set between the Rocky Mountains and the Pacific Ocean. "You can be lying on a beach one minute and, after an hour's drive, be snowboarding in the mountains with a view of downtown Vancouver," says the 23-year-old graphic-design graduate from Downpatrick, Co Down.

Until now, only full-time students such as Hampton have been able to get working visas without prior employment by a Canadian company. The new visa marks a strengthening of relations between Ireland and Canada, according to Tom Brady of the Department of Foreign Affairs. "Historically we're very close," he says, referring to the 15 per cent of Canadians who claim Irish heritage. The Irish influence is visible everywhere in Canada, from Irish surnames such as Conway and Quessy (the French-Quebec variant of Casey) to the thousands who line the streets of Montreal for North America's longest-running St Patrick's Day parade.

Yet for all the cordiality with which Canadians greet the Irish, young people still overlook this big-hearted country in favour of the US. Cork-born Michael Kenneally, professor of Canadian Irish studies at Concordia University, in Montreal, puts it down to Canada's struggling economy during the 1980s and 1990s. There were few opportunities for immigrants unless they had skills that could not be provided by a local. Now, with a forecast of 3.2 per cent growth for this year, the highest of any G8 nation, Canada is becoming more appealing.

There's another reason why emigration from Ireland to Canada has traditionally been so sluggish, according to Kenneally. Almost every Irish person has a relative in the US. Most Irish-Canadians are third- or fourth-generation immigrants with no immediate family in Ireland. "Canada could never compete with the pull of families in large American cities."

Kenneally is hopeful that the new visa, which targets people between the ages of 18 and 35, will revive Irish travellers' interest in Canada.

"I definitely see myself living here," says Hampton after six months in Vancouver. "There are many other places I'd like to see, but Canada has made a big impression." - Clare Byrne

Students can get more details about the Work in Canada programme from USIT (01-6021600). It will post detailed information on its website, www.usit.ie, late next week