Questions about passports

Factual Questions
1

I just returned from a trip to Germany. This is the 7th time I have gone to Europe and looking at my passport, you wouldn’t know it. I only have a few stamps, one from Germany, one from England (in and outbound) and one from Iceland.

However, this time I noticed that my (US) passport was stamped when I arrived in Germany, when I left Germany and when I arrived back in the USA. I have never had my passport stamped upon entry to my home country. I also noticed the last few times that the airport people and immigration run my passport thru a reader. Which leads to my questions.

Does the US State Department keep track of where American citizens have traveled to? When my passport is scanned, does it register in a government database? Also, what is the purpose of stamping a passport? Some countries do, some don’t, some do sporadically.

Eric

2

Good questions that I too am eager to know the Straight Dope about. Rostfrei mentioned a stop in Iceland and that reminded me of my 2002 trip to Germany from the USA with a plane change in Iceland. I didn’t understand why Iceland stamped my US passport coming in since I never entered the country and why they used the European Union Seal (circle of stars) with IS (Iceland) in the middle. They’re not part of the Union, I wasn’t going there and when I got to Germany on the non-stop from Iceland there was no passport control for the passengers, just customs. Same thing going home. Nothing in Germany and Iceland stamped me out of the EU. US has always stamped my passport even on road trips home from Canada.

3

As far as I understand it, once one of these countries stamps your passport, that acts as your visa for any of the other countries.

Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden.

http://www.traveldocs.com/de/vr.htm

4

Just going to guess here, so if anyone knows better, I would be interested as well.

I will bet that if the US State Department didn’t keep track of where you live, that since 9-11 they do now. I know that when I went back to the States with my Japanese wife, the agent asked for my Japanese Certification of Alien Registration, which he entered into the computer. Has to be going into the database.

I think that stamping would have been much more important before databases. Even before the European countries have always been more lax (OK, I’m taking about the 80s, don’t know before then) about stamping, especially about travelling within the continent than Asian countries. I’ve never not had my passport stamped in Asia.

5

Oops. That came out wrong. Try again:

Even before the Schengen agreement (see http://www.eurovisa.info/BackgroundInfo.htm ) European countries have always been more lax