Passport Problem
 

My wife and I have traveled to quite a few countries with our passports with no problems. However on a recent tour group trip with a travel company to Mexico, with 43 others, we had a difficulty getting into the country.

When my wife’s passport was scanned, some kind of flag came up on the computer which caused quite a stir. They could not speak English and we could not speak Spanish. They told my wife, through the Spanish-speaking tour director, to stand aside. We tried to find out what the problem was, but they would not say. Finally they asked for more identification, and my wife produced her picture driver’s license. This didn’t satisfy them and they produced a form to fill out. The tour director filled out most of it, so I don’t know what all the questions were; however, one asked why she was going to Mexico. The tour director said to put on our best smiles and hope for the best.

Finally, after making us wait until everyone else was processed, they stamped the passport and allowed us through. I did see that they had made photo copies of all our documents. They never would tell us what the problem was.

One of our fellow travelers, who worked as a bank loan officer, said that my wife’s name might have shown up as one who was undesirable for some reason or another. I suppose that sounds like a reason, although her name is pretty unusual. But what if John Jones or Mary Smith was a criminal, does that mean that every John Jones or Mary Smith is going to be stopped?? This sounds like a pretty lame reason, considering the thousands or more same-name individuals.

Can anyone shed some light on this??

Every John Jones or Mary Smith with the same middle name and DOB as the wanted person, possibly.

Nothing more than conjecture, no.

Names can be a problem.... My travel buddy has a very common surname.. and from experience it would seem he shares a first name AND a DOB with a "person of interest" :D His passport has been held several times for further examination...

Best advice he got - the last time this happened - was to ensure his MIDDLE name was included on all travel documents/tickets etc... makes sense to me, that has got to reduce the chances of a "match" considerably...

As yyzvoyageur has suggested there will be a full match occasionally!

Never a nasty experience - the immigration folks were always pleasant...

My father has a match on all four characteristics of his name (first, middle, last and generation) with a "person of interest" in the IRA.

It's Mexico, guy. I seriously doubt their "database" is really up to speed yet.

Thanks for the replies.

What's the best solution when none can speak English? The only thing I can think of is to carry a copy of the birth certificate and to have a picture driver's license. If our tour director had not been a Spanish speaker I'm not sure where we would have been. At the very least we were holding up an entire busload which was on a very tight schedule.

This reminds me of cases where someone is arrested because somewhere someone using the same name committed a crime. Where's the logic in acting like if you have someone with the same NAME, you have the person you want? How many names are really that unique?

Has the OP's wife ever reported a passport lost or stolen?

I used to have my doubts about some less developed country's (mis)management of blacklist and immigration control databases and presumed that they would certainly have worse implementation than what we have in the US. I no longer have those serious doubts since we got DHS.

A better way to phrase that might be, "What's the best solution when I haven't learned the local language?"

Does she have one of those new e-passports? I wonder if the passport reader had a hard time accessing the chip and flagged it as tampered?