supatight80

Am i the only one happy with passports not being stamped?
I have 2 passports and i find it a pain having to renew each of them every 2-3 years. In fact i never held a passport that lasted 3 years and up.

Im so glad that more and more countries are using the e-gate route.

thehurricaneheather

This!

I live in the Netherlands and travel frequently. Did the math and I will only have my passport for max 3 years before I have to replace due to being full (I have the double passport). The culprit? Netherlands stamps me in and out for every trip. I’ve had the passport for a year and a half. 6 of the 16 used pages are from Netherlands stamps and I’ve only lived here for 6 months. Ready for full e-gates for non-EU residents. As of now, I can leave using e-gate, but still need a stamp. Cannot come back in via e-gates.

Dave510

Must've had some interesting quips from immigration officers when you presented them with your phone book.

Eastbay1K

The only thing that I get sad about with a new passport is having a new number. After years of not having to look when I complete the immigration forms of other countries, the "I don't remember the number" process starts all over again.

hfly

Thank goodness that the UK gates now work for US passports. There was nothing worse, even at Fast Track than getting stuck behind a flight of people who needed visas to teh UK and waiting for dozens of them to do the fingerprint thing. Now, its 1 minute max. BTW, what sort of junior bush league stuff is going on in this thread, as any serious traveler has a minimum of two passports anyway, traditionally the "book" with many additions (on 6 in my main passport which still has a few good years on it, and was already a double.........and we all know that can't happen anymore) and cycles through 4 (previously 2) year passports, in order to keep the big one going. I'm really happy that countries are doing away with stamps, for all the "cred" one gets in some countries, one also gets the studious German passport official who decides to examine every single page, and seemingly every stamp..................which gets very tiring when there are over 200 pages and literally thousands of stamps, some with 40 stamps across two page spreads!

GetSetJetSet

I had a number of booklets added to my old passport, I think it ended up something like 116 pages, maybe more? Now the biggest hassle is that new US passports can't have booklets added, so I am going to have to get a new passport much more often, and as it is, I sometimes have to lug my old one along with my new one as I have a China visa valid until 2025 and an India visa valid until 2022 in my old passport. Once I fill the new one, which is likely to happen before my Russia 3-year ends, I could find myself having to drag three passports around on certain itineraries...that is annoying.

Zeeb

Even in the world of Flyertalk I'd bet that only an extreme minority of people travel enough to need two passports. If you want to humble brag about your travel that's fine but there's no need to be a jerk about it.

hfly

It's called "tongue and cheek",. but if you really want to "go there" there are plenty of threads on FT talking about how and who regularly carries second US passports, not to mention threads ad nauseum about/from people who carry 2. 3, 4, 5 and even more of different nationalities that they are entitled to.

AlwaysFlyStar

I would be happy if you could just travel everywhere with a credit card sized machine readable passport and didn't need any stamps at all. I mean, I appreciate that some places have some more unique stamps and maybe that seems cool the first couple of times, but I would love to have a passport that would actually last the full ten years and immigration systems that electronically registered your arrival date. On plenty of occasions I have been held up at passport control because the entry stamp was not clear enough and they were not sure if I had stayed the correct amount of time. And since visas usually take 1-2 pages, you just lose the space like that. I am already at the point where I need to renew my passport from 2016 because it is nearly full and about half of the pages are consumed by visas. Count me as one who is delighted when they don't stamp.

NavSTL

I, for one, do mourn the slow death of the passport stamp. Chinese entry/exit stamps are still going though, last I checked, and they're actually really cool--the principal text on them is unique to the stamp and is the work of a noted calligrapher. In isolation, they're mostly obsolete, with pretty much all countries that have significant concerns about inbound migration already fingerprinting everyone and keeping digital records anyway. Stamps do have one big benefit to the traveler, though: they show your comings and goings to anyone who looks at them, not just officials of one particular government, which can be pretty handy if you're trying to prove to a U.S. visa officer that you only stayed ten days on your leisure trip to the Europe or whatever--or if you're a U.S. citizen trying to prove your foreign-born kid is also a citizen and you need to prove you were in the U.S. for the requisite time.

Plus, y'know, they're pretty.

hfly

NAvSTL, Considering the fact that for the last 2 decades I would say that US passport control officers have stamped my passport inbound maybe 20% of the time, and that the US has never had outbound stamps.........stamps have never been an accurate way to track your time in and out of the United States..............If you are trying to prove the 5 year thing (assuming that the other parent is not a US citizen) then school transcripts and affidavits are far more effective, and something that one should have done and in order before the kid is born........

NavSTL

It's never that difficult for people who grew up in the U.S. and/or have done their homework, true, but there are people at the razor's edge of the five-and-two rule who didn't necessarily plan ahead, or even contemplate that their kids might be American citizens--until they try to get their kids U.S. visas and have to settle the matter once and for all. The fact that, as you note, passports aren't stamped reliably and haven't been for a while is kind of my whole point--the stamps are useful as a record when they're present, and their increasing absence can be problematic. Not everyone trying to transmit citizenship has a sophisticated, or even a passing awareness of American nationality law.

hfly

3+2 BTW. Oh, I have witnessed the bumbling of such people, often educated people, who did not bother to look up anything until it was time, and then find themselves wanting............including the US citizen who was an Army brat, and who married a non-US citizen and they had their kid abroad, and it took them maybe 2-3 years to gather the necessary paperwork as this person had spent the right amount of years in the US, but never went to the same school for more than 2 years, etc. Or the interesting case of a person I know whose parents grew up in the Panama Canal Zone, which was in fact part of the US when they were born, but later was not...........and the fun paperwork needed for that.................etc etc. OTOH, I know people who keep their boarding passes, and records of their kids days in summer camp, etc, just to make sure that one day there will be no problems for their grandkids...............or just make sure their grandkids are born in the US.