dnLwire

I wouldn't go near my passport with Go gone. Your passport is gonna look like you used it as a plate to hold your Taco! Plus you have a good chance of getting denied entry into another country. If your really out of options and are willing to risk it all I would only use steam to remove useless visas.

cestmoi123

Before you try this on your passport, put a sticker on a piece of regular paper, then remove it with Goo Gone, and then look at the piece of paper. Not going to be pretty.

Goo Gone is great stuff, but I would never use it on a porous surface like paper.

exerda

Yes, you can remove those. Usually the passport control folks remove the staple and the stub when exiting the country IME, but if not, you can definitely remove those yourself without fear.


Some visas are full-page. The problem will be that the next place you go is likely to stamp that empty page rather than squeezing in their stamp in a free spot on another page. (CDG did that to me last time; I had plenty of open spots on current pages, but they flipped to the end and stamped in the middle of a new, blank page. Thankfully, I still have a few empty ones if needed.)

seawolf

Waiting for someone to report that after they removed the visa, they found the issuing country had stamped THIS PASSPORT PAGE HAS BEEN TAMPERED WITH underneath. LOL.

Therealjjj77

The text found in the passport is not US law. Additionally 18 USC Sec 1543 does not say what you are trying to make it say. The kinds of changes it speaks of all relate to intent to fraud. There is nothing that can be found in the criminal code about pulling out old used visas from other countries. That does not mean, though, that the other country will agree with you removing their visa if you return.

flyerCO

Why are you replying to a post that is nearly 8 years old, and in a thread that has no posts for nearly 1.5 years?

As to your claim that there's no law that covers this, that's incorrect. Removing a visa is an alteration. If you then use such altered passport you've violated the law.

GUWonder

It depends on the country, but in the US for US passports, it's not always illegal -- intent matters.

The question of legality is distinct from the question of whether or not it will lead to use problems with government authorities or airline reps.

Some topics should not be considered time-barred.

televisor

Which law, and in what countries? (Despite what certain countries might think, laws aren't global.)

jphripjah

If a poster runs across a topic that interests him/her and has an opinion to share, I think he or she should feel free to do so, even if the last post was 18 months ago.

chollie

This discussion about removing visas makes me wonder. I got a e-visa that I printed at home for (IIRC) Cambodia. I didn't glue it in and neither did the immigration officials. It fell out after I went home, and I've traveled without it since. I have a passport with entry/exit stamps from a country that requires visas, but no actual visa in my passport.

Now that I'm reading this thread, I wonder if that could have caused a problem if someone had chosen to scrutinize my passport carefully for some reason. More importantly, without the actual visa on me, how could I prove I ever had one?

flyerCO

They won't care. The actual visa was only neededd when entering that country.

As fork removing the visa. It's an alteration and with intent if you're removing it to use the page for more entry/exit stamps.

televisor

But who enforces that alterations aren't made? I rarely visit my home country (they own my passport), and when I do: no immigration officer touches my passport.

I'm not sure other countries will care in any way, as long as the data page and chip (and any visas that country has issued) haven't been tampered with.

Also worth noting: a bunch of Taiwanese citizens travel with stickers on their passport, it doesn't seem to cause any significant issues. (Slightly different issue adding stickers to the cover, but fundamentally still an "alteration".)

chollie

Please re-read my post. It was an e-visa that I printed at home. There were no instructions telling me to glue it into my passport. At immigration, they checked my home-printed visa and my passport and stamped my passport. They didn't glue it into my passport, they just handed it back to me with my passport. I never 'removed' anything because it was never attached. I didn't alter anything: the visa is exactly as it was when I printed it out and I didn't change anything on my passport.

flyerCO

Sorry, the 2nd portion was a reply to the postings about alterations. Some posters are claiming that removing a visa that is stuck on a page isn't an alteration with intent.

In your case you're not altering your passport. There's no legal issue here. It's just like when you visit Israel. They give you a little paper permit/visa instead of stamping your passport. There's no issue tossing it since it was never made a portion of the passport. Same goes for your e-visa. It's all electronically recorded, no one cares about it not being there since it was never there to begin with.

GUWonder

Where was the claim made in this thread?

It's the nature of the intent -- even when it comes to removal -- that is part of the issue in some places.

When it comes to intentional activity, not all types of intent behind intentional actions give rise to being equally actionable under US law.

Not all alterations are created and/or treated equally, for the nature of the intent may matter under the law. But, regardless of the nature of the intent, a removal of a used/expired visa sticker in a passport may be noticed and lead to inconvenience during the course of attempted travel -- whether or not a prosecutable violation of law is relevant. It's a bad idea, more so if the person can easily get a valid new/replacement/secondary passport.