soitgoes

Persona non grata.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persona_non_grata

UAL Traveler

That's right. State will also issue a clean second PP if prior travel proved problematic. Hard Israeli stamps (despite my request for a loose sheet of paper) prevented my obtaining an Oman visa, until I reapplied with a second PP. State told me things would then go smoothly, and they were right. I found it interesting that Omani officials didn't care/check that the name and address were the same... just a different PP number without offending stamps.

wcaldog

Hello. Has any one has recent experience with requesting additonal visa pages for US passports by sending it to the Philadelphia address? I sent my passport last Saturday, April 12 by requesting regular service instead of expedited service because I thought I was not going to travel until November. HOWEVER, I may have to go to China for work on May 21. I called today and they told me that they had received my application but has not processed it yet and won't be able to tell me when I will get it.

Can someone please tell me how long I should expect to wait? What if it hasn't arrived the week before May 21? Anything I can do without cancelling my trip? If I get it the week before, that would be 5 weeks that they have. Is that sufficient time for them to add pages and send back via regular mail?

I really regret doing it now especially since hearing from here that people just go to the US embassy in foreign countries to get the pages added the same day. Since I can't undo this, any advice or word of comfort would be greatly appreciated.

tom911

We had a thread about a week ago where an FTer said he got his back in 15 days via regular mail. This was for a renewal though, versus adding pages.
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=810913

You might consider intervention by your Congressman if you get into May and it becomes time sensitive, even if you end up paying the expedite fee.

soitgoes

You'll probably get it back in time for your trip. If you don't have it by the beginning of May, then I would contact the NPIC/State again. That would give you time to get the passport back or even get a new passport issued.

Do you already have a visa for China? Or do you need to get that, too, before you go?

mecabq

Kind of interesting, the same thing happened to me in Tunisia. He stamped the last (endorsements/amendments) page for no apparent reason. Maybe we got the same mischievous agent!

In general, I don't think that it's possible to run out of space for stamps. They will find space, stamp on the extra pages, or just stamp over another stamp. I would be curious to hear if anyone was ever refused entry because of this. Needing space for a sticker or stamp visa is, of course, a different matter.

I have had pages added twice; yeah, it's a bit ugly, but who cares?

stimpy

I've added pages something like 4 or 5 times and now have over 200 pages in my passport. It still fits fine in my pocket.

You can request that they add twice as many pages as normal if you want. When they see how many visas I have, they usually even suggest adding double.

It is far, far easier to get pages added at a US Consulate outside of the US.

stimpy

Also I have a second passport, not because of Israel (I ask them to not stamp my passport), but because sometimes certain visas take several days and I can't be without my passport for that long.

GUWonder

There may be a very obvious reason they do this there. It has to do with how people read in Arabic -- from right to left in Arabic, rather than from left to right like in English -- and consequently it isn't unnatural to go from the "back", especially considering how the spine of the book is often placed.

Also, when the passport is thick and full of lots of stamps, many agents think it just easier to go toward the back and look for a blank spot from there.

MisterTanaka

You're not alone. I did exactly this two years ago on a month-long trip. I picked Vientiane, Laos, for the stamp over Bangkok, Phnom Penh and Ho Chi Minh City, though any of those would have been interesting enough.

However, the Vientiane embassy used a tool that pressed a seal into the page (no ink, just raised and lowered images), so it's kind of hard to read. My wife's addition, however, has a nice ink stamp stating that the pages were added at the Hong Kong consulate.

mecabq

That's a good point, although I have entered an Arabic-speaking country 50 times in the past two years and no other time did the agent stamp the last page; they may well have started at the "back," but they at least went as far as the designated visa pages as opposed to stamping on the endorsements/amendments pages.

whiteknuckles

This has happened to me twice: Once leaving AMS, and the second time 10 days later when I departed Prague.

GUWonder

The officials at these points are often busy or distracted or something else and just go for whatever spot they fancy without regard to a notation about the page being an amendment or endorsement page rather than a visa page.

I have lots of stamps on my seal and amendment/endorsement pages and it's been no issue except with regard to getting the US government to be willing to use those pages in the future for the designated purpose.

astanley

I got an earful in DFW after the MTY Immigration guy stamped my "Amendments" page with my entry stamp back in June.

Cheers,

-Andrew

DesertNomad

Please tell that to the immigration officials in Tunisia and the Czech Republic.