Is my American tourist visa active?

Question

I got my American tourist visa to transit through Newark Airport, flying from Toronto to Frankfurt. Since this was my first time in America and at an US airport, I wasnt sure of the regular steps to transfer terminals and go through immigration and checking. As soon as I left the bridge, people who wanted to move to other terminals were heading to a stairwell nearby which brings them to the Airport terminal transit buses. I followed them and reached the designated terminal for my next flight.

After reaching my final destination and got my passport stamped I realized I missed out my American security/immigration exit stamp, which would denote I was in US only for couple of hours.

Its been four months since this happened and I am worried that I just spent four months out of six off of my US tourist visa. Would I be able to explain to US immigration/security officers about this on my next visit and have six months intact on my visa?

Answer 1

You have two misunderstandings there.

First, the US does not use exit stamps. Departures are registered based on passport information supplied by the airlines for departing international flights. So if you boarded a flight bound for Germany, your departure is very likely to have been recorded as it should.

You can check your departure record yourself by searching for your passport details on https://i94.cbp.dhs.gov/.

Second, US tourist visas do not come with a total allowance of 6 months that you need to spread out over the lifetime of the visa. The visa authorizes you to show up at a port of entry and apply for admission any number of times during its period of validity -- if the CBP officer at the border then admits you, at that point you will be granted a maximum stay of (usually) 6 months, but those months are not taken from your visa; they come directly from CBP.

The next time you enter you will usually get a full 6 months of admission again, unless your travel history or other circumstances looks like you might be trying to live in the US (in which case you can either be refused completely or granted admission for a shorter period, at the discretion of the CBP officer).