The Record That Actually Controls Your Stay

A visa in a passport is only permission to travel to a U.S. port of entry and ask for admission; it is the electronic Form I-94 admission record — the class of admission and the 'admit until' date CBP creates at entry — that legally controls how long a person may stay and in what status. A visa can carry a later expiration date than the I-94 and that is irrelevant: overstaying the I-94 date is the violation that matters, regardless of what the visa stamp still shows.

CBP maintains an online I-94 correction request process for certain errors made at admission (commonly a wrong date, or automated-system mistakes at a land port), separate from and faster than filing anything with USCIS. It does not cover every kind of error — a fundamentally wrong class of admission, or an error at a preflight/airport inspection the traveler disputes, more often needs either CBP's deferred inspection site process or a formal USCIS filing instead. Which path applies depends on exactly what is wrong and where the error happened.

For errors CBP's online correction process does not cover, or for a replacement of a lost or mutilated paper I-94, the applicable USCIS filing is Form I-102, Application for Replacement/Initial Nonimmigrant Arrival-Departure Document. It is filed with USCIS, not CBP, and typically needs the underlying evidence of the correct facts (passport, visa, the erroneous document) attached — it is a request to fix the record, not an automatic correction.