The US doesn't check passports although the government does have a self-reporting compliance requirement for non-resident foreigners.

And Canada, and the USA, and Mexico.

hello all,

I have a valid Schengen Visa in my older passport. I ran out of pages in that passport and thus got a new passport. The old passport now has a stamp saying 'cancelled without prejudice'.

How does the Schengen rules work ? In case of USA, I just carry both the passports. The Schengen visa was issued by German Embassy and on this trip i may either enter Schengen via FRA or ARN.

thanks in advance.
- gaurab

No problem provided the physical Schengen visa sticker is not damaged or defaced in anyway. It remains valid in conjunction with a valid passport until its originally endorsed expiry date.

I had an interesting experience departing FRA last year. At departure immigration, they scan my passport and the computer says something to the effect of "no record on file." The officer gets a furrowed look on her face, and then starts flipping through the pages looking for my entry stamp (I assume that what normally happens is the computer has a record of your entry into Schengen regardless of which country you entered through, and assuming you haven't overstayed, they clear you for departure without necessarily finding your entry stamp).

Well, I had no entry stamp. Something odd had happened upon my arrival at CDG. I was whisked past the immigration line by an airline employee, and she showed the immigration officer my passport cover (US passport) and said something in French to him, and he just waved me through. So, no stamp in my passport and no entry in the computer that I had been lawfully admitted. I didn't think much of it, as the whole int'l arrival/departure process in Europe has seemed sloppy to me as compared to other countries.

Instead of just playing dumb, I spoke up and told her that she would not find an entry stamp even before she finished paging through my passport, and explained that there was some mix-up at CDG and they didn't stamp it. She paused for a moment, looked me in the face, and I could see on her face that she was thinking "Oh, the (gosh darned) French!" for a moment, and then she sighed and waved me on. Rather than fix the problem, I think it was easier for her to just ignore it and let me pass, so there's probably no record of either my arrival or departure in the Schengen computers or my passport.

According to what I read on a different thread this happens quite regularly at CDG, and I suspect word must have got round to Immigration Officers elsewhere.

Also, land borders between Switzerland and France are often unmanned, so people who entered via that route will often not have a stamp (but this will not be an issue for much longer seeing Switzerland is in the process of joining the club and will then be issuing its own Schengen entry stamps)

Please continue the discussion in the Europe forum. Thanks for your understanding.

Jouy31
TravelBuzz moderator

You will find several reports about people that didn't get an entry stamp at the Schengen Border. Especially CDG is mentioned quite often. Best thing to do if you didn't get an entry stamp to keep your boarding pass if arriving by plane or your train ticket if arriving by train. This way you can show at least something.

Rule of thumb about overstaying is that 1 or 2 days are normally tolerated but only if you have a clear record and the officer at the border is not in a bad mood. Still I wouldn't include overstaying in my trip since unexpected things can always happen that you need to stay longer than you actually planed.

I flew in from AMS to Switzerland on a Canadian passport. The air entry part of Schengen is supposed to take effect in March sometime so it's an international/non-Schengen travel for now. My passport was scanned but not stamped on the way in. Not sure if it was scanned on the way out but no stamps either. I do note that the Swiss use cantonal police rather than federal immigration officers to police this.

I had a similar situation flying out of DNR 9 years ago. The French NP officer neglected to stamp on the way in so I had to explain on the way out.