alphaod

No, they don't really care. They do have a record in their computer though.

zkzkz

I was actually under the impression it was illegal for US officials to stamp a US passport.

alphaod

Where did you hear that?!

blackdawn2

My US passport has never been stamped entering the U.S. Illegal or not, it's just a waste of time and ink.

mike_la_jolla

I'd add that the only place I have had trouble with passports stamps has been with Swiss immigration. If you enter by train, often you don't clear customs at all. When leaving, the agent tries to find the entry stamp. It just holds up the line and nothing more. I just tell him/her that I entered via train via Geneva and off I go ...

RussianTexan

I've had it stamped every single time but once. It's still nice to have, in the sense that "My trip got me THREE stamps, not TWO!"

GUWonder

It is not illegal. It is ordinary and most frequently done legally by the US.

It is useful for some US citizens to have the US stamps, as in some cases it is used to create a travel history (or evidence of such) or used as evidence of the government's record being misleading.

tp49

I've only ever had my US Passport stamped coming back into the US once at MSP. I thought it was really odd when they did it. Maybe it depends on the entry point but my experience is limited to SFO and MSP only.

Doc Savage

You must be some kind of shady character, I wager.

zkzkz

You should never clear immigration arriving by train any more since Switzerland joined Schengen. This was a fairly recent change though.

Captain Schmidt

You entered the Schengen zone in Rome so your passport should have been stamped there. There are no immigration controls between Italy and Switzerland therefore there is no possibility of getting a Swiss entry stamp.

I've no personal experience of Swiss border guards checking passengers arriving by train in Zürich, though this may well have been a customs check as Switzerland is not part of the EU and although there are no immigration checks between the two countries, there are still occasional customs checks.

emrdoc

In my experience with entering Switzerland via rail, once the guards see that you have a US passport, they move on to the next compartment. They don't even open it.

Dovster

The Immigration Officer was completely wrong. Both Italy and Switzerland are Schengen nations and entry into one is considered entry into all.

I travel (by car) from Italy to Switzerland and back several times a year and it has been almost 20 years since anyone has ever asked to see my passport. The sole exceptions to this were when I bought things in in Switzerland for which I wanted the Duty Free credit. I had to enter the tax offices on the Swiss side of the border to get it and the officers on the Italian side would see this and want to know what I was importing into Italy.

I would then show them my American or Israeli passport, tell them I was taking the things out of the Italy and back home, and that was the end of it -- and even then they did not stamp my passport.

The travelman

Hello all.
I came into Miami from Spain last Thursday (holidays). In the first CBP booth, my wife and my son got their passports stamped. I had my fingerprints taken, a picture taken, (as everyone), but the officer told me that due to my name (very common in Spain), I had to go to secondary inspection...he said #I am sorry but you have to#

It was quite quick and they cleared me, but without stamp (I noticed this later...).

Once I recovered my luggage from the belt and finally went to the exit officer, he sent me to another room, where I had to open my luggage. Nothing strange inside, nothing taken away. Again, the officer handed me my passport after doing several checks and said everything was OK...so I was admitted into the USA.

But once in the parking area, I saw that I had no stamp anywhere in my passport....

Is this common practice when you go through secondary inspection? Can I have problems to leave next week? Can I have problems to come back to the US in the future? I am sure my entry is recorded in their systems (fingerprints, photo, electronic passport, ESTA), but this stamp issue keeps me worried.

Thanks!

ajGoes

TheUnited States has no outward immigration control, so leaving will not be a problem.