"Corrected" Passport Stamp?

[Lord Manhammer]

When leaving the EU in Amsterdam yesterday, my wife was stopped by passport control at Schiphol Airport. They couldn't find her entrance stamp from when we entered the EU at Roissy CDG in Paris. This is because the machine there didn't require it. She was waived right through (I required a stamp in mine). Well, the agent at Schiphol told her she needed a corrected passport stamp to reflect the date that she entered the EU. Have any of ever experienced this? It was a first for us.

 

[Micca]

Clearly your wife is involved in some kind of undercover activity. This could get good, stay with her!

 

[luvthatduke]

I have no answer, but just wanted to say you live a very interesting life!
I enjoy your threads; you share about your travels & teaching & they're fun to read.

 

[SirDuff]

Sounds like someone messed up and/or was confused in CDG. Usually, they separate EU and non-EU passports and send them through separate sets of machines (with some non-EU passport holders not allowed to use the machines at all) and the machines for the non-EU passports, feed into an exit that requires you to pass by an agent. Unlike, say, Schipol, where everyone (who can use a machine) uses the same set of machines and there is a sign telling non-EU passport holders to get their passports checked/stamped (and, in theory, someone standing there to direct you) where it is much easier to accidently miss getting it stamped.

I’ve had confusion sometimes because, if I enter/exit Schengen from Switzerland, I don’t get a stamp (as I live there) but in other airports, they don‘t understand my CDL (it’s not a normal Swiss residence permit as it is related to diplomatic status), so I have an uneven number of entries/exits .

 

[bcla]

Some countries don't stamp passports if they can electronically record the passport as being used for entry. Most entries I've seen my passport scanned through a reader that can read that standard format that pretty much every country uses. I know Canada usually doesn't stamp US passports regardless of the method of entry.

I'd be surprised if they didn't have an entry record in some electronic database.

 

[kymom99]

When I traveled to England and Scotland this year, I got no stamps.

 

[Bad Pink Tink 2.0]

Its to do with the Schengen area. None EU passport holders can only stay in The EU no more than 90 days in every 180 days. Passports from none EU countries need to be stamped upon entry into the Schengen area. The non EU passport line has become busier at ever point of entry due to Brexit and that UK passport holders now have to use the same line as Americans.

Schengen area is the 27 countries on mainland Europe. The UK which is England, Wales , Scotland and Northern Ireland and Republic of Ireland are not part of Schengen area.

 

[Moliphino]

I don't think I've ever had an agent look that closely at the stamps. They just look for a blank spot and stamp it.

 

[Bad Pink Tink 2.0]

I don't think I've ever had an agent look that closely at the stamps. They just look for a blank spot and stamp it.

Its got a lot more strict in the Schengen area due to Brexit. UK people don't have freedom of travel anymore, and are the same as Americans now, so the boarder checks on mainland Europe are a lot busier.

 

[bcla]

I don't think I've ever had an agent look that closely at the stamps. They just look for a blank spot and stamp it.

I entered Thailand twice within about a week. On the second entry at customs, the guy went through my entire passport and settled on the same page as my previous visit. However, I've never gotten an exit stamp that wasn't placed on the same page as the corresponding entry stamp.

I didn't always get a stamp when reentering the United States.

 

[Bad Pink Tink 2.0]

I didn't always get a stamp when reentering the United States.

US Passport Check have stopped issuing stamps since 2022. I didnt get a stamp in June 2023. Its a US Homelands Department new policy, effective in both domestic airports and in countries like Ireland which has a US Preclearance Arrangement.

 

[mousefan73]

When leaving the EU in Amsterdam yesterday, my wife was stopped by passport control at Schiphol Airport. They couldn't find her entrance stamp from when we entered the EU at Roissy CDG in Paris. This is because the machine there didn't require it. She was waived right through (I required a stamp in mine). Well, the agent at Schiphol told her she needed a corrected passport stamp to reflect the date that she entered the EU. Have any of ever experienced this? It was a first for us.

Does your wife happen to have a residency permit for France? That’s why she didn’t need a stamp.? if she arrived as a non-EU citizen or resident, then she definitely needed a stamp so something was made in error when you guys arrived. I can see why they would correct this to ensure that her passport showed the less than 90 day stay.

 

[SirDuff]

Its got a lot more strict in the Schengen area due to Brexit. UK people don't have freedom of travel anymore, and are the same as Americans now, so the boarder checks on mainland Europe are a lot busier.

How do you think that Brexit made it ”a lot more strict”? Schengen countries didn’t change their rules for others due to Brexit (though they are changing the rules next year with the ETAs). It changed which line those from the UK use in Schengen airports and may have increased time for the “other passports“ lines (anecdotally, I didn’t really nice that much difference, but stands to reason that it would).

But that’s totally different than saying that they got “a lot more strict” and that it would change how closely they looked at an American’s passport.

 

[Moliphino]

Its got a lot more strict in the Schengen area due to Brexit. UK people don't have freedom of travel anymore, and are the same as Americans now, so the boarder checks on mainland Europe are a lot busier.

I've mostly been going between the US and countries in the Schengen area. They scan the passport, barely look at the stamps.

 

[bcla]

I'm surprised they would even care. Everything is logged and certainly I'd think in Europe they would have access to a unified database.

For instance, the US gives any nonimmigrant visitors access to their entry/exit history.

https://www.cbp.gov/newsroom/spotlights/arrivaldeparture-history-now-available-i-94-webpage

 

[Lord Manhammer]

I'm surprised they would even care. Everything is logged and certainly I'd think in Europe they would have access to a unified database.

For instance, the US gives any nonimmigrant visitors access to their entry/exit history.

https://www.cbp.gov/newsroom/spotlights/arrivaldeparture-history-now-available-i-94-webpage

That's the thing, they were able to see the exact time, date, and location where we first entered the EU. It was very strange.

 

[MillauFr]

Why is any country relying on stamps in 2023 that can easily be faked?

 

[bcla]

Why is any country relying on stamps in 2023 that can easily be faked?

I was looking over my expired passports and looked at how absolutely generic the US passport stamps looked like. Besides the hesitancy of a stamp maker to forge an official stamp, I'd think it's pretty easy. However, my wife got back from a trip once and it looked like they had updated the stamp.

Mine all look like this. Of course the validity date was blank because I was a US citizen.

The new one looks a little bit harder to fake.

I do remember an old episode of the CBS series Simon & Simon where there was a plot that involved an international thief and a professor who was accused of being that thief based on where he had traveled. He pulled out his passport to try and prove that he wasn't at those exact locations only to find that his passport stamps indicated that he was. They then had an expert look at it saying that the possibility of exactly faking all those passport stamps was next to impossible, but then the expert noticed that the stitching in his passport was off and looked like those pages had been removed and sewn back in. It was revealed that the actual thief had broken into his house and had the passport altered with the pages from his own passport.

Not sure how well that would really work. Nearly all of my visas have my passport number on them, except for one older one that's just one big stamp. I had a New Zealand entry stamp (just a 90 day non-visa visitor's permit) without a departure stamp. And my latest US passport has the passport number laser burned into the front cover and all the pages, although it stops at the back cover.