Modo

The crucial issue is

” My wife is on a Japanese passport but UK resident. We leave to go back to London next week.”

Post Brexit UK “leave to remain” residents who are not citizens - even technically defined by many jurisdictions as Permanent Residents - require a visa for Schengen.

lack of an arrival stamp….

LondonAussie

Can you explain more on that, please, as I’ve not heard of it before.

I’m a UK resident that travels regularly to the EU and back on an Australian passport (now quite full of stamps from this!)

csycsycsy

Could one ask for a backdated entry stamp when leaving?

That's because you presumably present your EU resident card, without the status/card then 90/180 matters.


Not relevant? JP gets visa free access to EU

corporate-wage-slave

Yes, but it's a niche practice, I expect the reaction wouldn't be positive. The usual practice is just to give the exit stamp and they will say "keep the boarding pass". Sometimes they will give a same day entrance stamp, which effectively makes it a one night stay. Most Schengen countries would not regard it as a big issue.

sehgalanuj

A similar issue happened to my mother who was traveling on a passport that requires a Schengen visa. When entering at Schiphol, the officer was apparently a trainee and forgot to stamp her passport. While departing from a German airport, they were perplexed at not finding an entry stamp that would make sense. Only then everyone realized that she had no stamp. It didn't cause problems, but it delayed the immigration process. The German police officer basically grumbled at the guy in Schiphol, then left with her passport and after about 15 mins of waiting came back with it. There was a manual entry made into the passport, with a special stamp indicating the date she had actually entered. My mother showed them the flight ticket she had traveled in on, and that was enough. She has been back and forth through the Schengen area at least a good 10-15 times since then without problems.

I suspect something like this would be enough for you as well. But make sure to especially get this so that future entries and exits are not questioned.

qraec777

To quote Ben Affleck from the Argo movie, "The second checkpoint... is immigration. You're each gonna hand them one of these. It says that you landed in the country two days ago. They'll look for the matching white one, which doesn't exist. You'll say you don't know what happened. And if you believe they lost the white slip, they'll believe it, too."

On a serious note, keep your boarding pass and luggage tags and explain your situation. Shouldn't be much of a problem as if you had intentions of sneaking into the country, you wouldn't be leaving the country within a week of arrival.

Modo

The right of visa free entry is defined by your passport not your residency. Australia is one of the most visa free passports including the Schengen area.

waribai

and Japan is not????

https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2023/...rful-passports

stockmanjr

Years ago this happened to me arriving MXP. We arrived very early in the morning and immigration or in fact anyone from the airport could be found. If we were leaving from MXP I wouldn't have been concerned but we were actually leaving from ZRH. The Swiss Border guard did not like this and oddly for Zurich ranted at my mom in French for five plus minutes about the Italians and let us pass. I asked my mom what the Border Guard said and she simply stated in a mom way "He did not say nice things about the Italians."

Modo

Yes Japan is Schengen Visa Free and your link is helpful.

Confess I hadn't fully read country of passport. But many if not most UK residency permit holders do require a Schengen visa.

However ---- still important to sort this out with appropriate passport stamps. It will likely cause an issue at UK immigration on return where the BRP and passport with travel details/explanation still needs presenting despite Japanese passport.

Also for future residency or citizenship applications travel dates and all passport pages need to be submitted. UKVI can be pedantic.

pbiflyer

That happened to me at CDG. We got in almost 2 hours early. Kept following the signs, hit a door, and we were outside. Departed out of FRA. They were not happy I did not have an entry stamp. Took a while, but they relented.

csycsycsy

OT: Thought US Green Card holders can enter certain countries visa free even if their passport/citizenship wouldn't have let them.

waribai

We never show anything at Heathrow. We go straight through the egates!

waribai

FWIW….We just sailed through passport control at departure. Not even a raised eyebrow!

:D!

Well, generally you submit the whole passport.

So many countries don't stamp now, including the UK itself, that they can't expect a completely verifiable record of your travel. A direct flight from the UK to Schengen would certainly have API recorded by the UK so there shouldn't be anything to worry about there. When the UK was in the EU there were no stamps for any EU/EEA citizen so they would have to rely on electronic records.

In 2019 I crossed some internal Schengen borders about 50 times during one week. I did keep some bus tickets which have now faded for my own purposes, while some of those crossings were on foot. Unless some agency had been recording which cell towers my phone connected to, there is no way anyone would know where I had been. Not to mention several hundred crossings in the space of a few minutes when I visited several country tripoints, which would be pointless to include in any migration application.

It does seem that Romance-language countries don't worry too much while German countries care more. Many of my Australian family's entries to Italy and France were not stamped, some where the passport wasn't even opened. The reaction of German/Swiss German and Dutch officers when exiting via those countries, has been extensively covered on many travel forums. The EU will need to change this culture if they want EES to work properly.