Hi all!

How many empty pages do I need in my US passport to come home? currently, I have 2 empty pages in my passport right now and I am going to HKG really soon. (too soon that it is impossible to do the page adding now) If they stamp on one of my empty pages when I enter HKG, will I be in trouble when I am trying to return to the US? From reading all the threads in the forum, I know that it is quite easy to add pages in the HKG consulate. But, if I can get away with it, I will just go through the page adding process when I get back to the US.

I know I should have thought about this earlier. to me. Thanks for the advice!

Your US passport can be completely full (i.e., have no space for a legible stamp) and you'll still be fine by DHS on return back to the US.

The US won't make a stink about your full US passport. Enjoy your trip home without any worries related to this.

If you have time while overseas (e.g., HKG), I'd get more pages inserted at the US consulate/embassy (just to avoid having to do so in the US).

Agreed, if you plan to continue using that same passport for future trips, I would also highly recommend taking some time to have extra pages added overseas. It can be done for free here in the US and overseas, with the difference being that in the US, you'd have to pay $60 if you wanted your passport back within 2 weeks. Overseas, it generally is a "while you wait" service, although I have read of instances where it took a few days... but it's still better than paying the $60.

You generally do not get US entry stamps in your passport, although it really depends on the customs & immigration officer processing your passport at your port of entry... or if you request an entry stamp. On my most recent entry with one set of extra visa pages in my passport and perhaps three blank pages remaining, that officer chose to stamp over two other stamps I had on one full visa page which now has 8 stamps! I guess he thought he was trying to be Officer Picaso. Actually I think he was trying to do me a favor by not taking up extra space on the clean pages so that wouldn't have to go get another set of visa pages added.

Have a great trip!

Slightly different subject but I am finding that the more additions I get in my passport, the more densely they overstamp all my earlier pages, My travel is constant (i.e. I would say that the amount of stamps and visas I receive are pretty much the same every year) and I was at a rate of a new addition every 7 months for the first two, then every ten months for the next two, every year for the next two. I would estimate (becasue I am not going to count every page) that currently my pages probably average 9 stamps per page throughout my entire passport, once it gets to a certain thickness, most PP stampers are just too lazy to find empty spaces.

Seems to me like it may depend on the airport, too. At IAD they always stamp mine and they always use the new oval-shaped red-and-blue stamp. At PHL and JFK they used the square red stamp, although the most recent time through either for me was in 2004. But in CLT, they never stamp my passport. Fine by me, really; why would I need or want a US stamp?

I've found that if I hand it to them with a boarding pass or customs form or something stuck in it, they often just stamp one of the two pages where the form was, so I sometimes try to find blank or nearly empty pages. Heathrow seems to be the exception. Every time I go there they flip through and stamp on the page where there are several other Heathrow stamps. Kind of funny, I suppose.