We (my family) toured Europe in 1989 - although we were South African and therefore still needed visas for many countries, we were driving a British van, and were waved through many checkpoint without a second glance. Italy was the exception - the carabiniere greeted us with submachine guns drawn, and all six of us were trooped out to stand before the steely gaze of the customs official. They let us past, but it was in stark contrast to some of the other border crossings…
Grim
Curses! Beaten to the punchline!
I’ve been to a few places where they never stamped your passport. It’s a bummer, because I like having the stamps in the passport, but they just waved me through.
Could you perhaps have been going past the passport control booth, clutching your obviously US passport, without noticing?
Still don’t. The US operates the Visa Waiver Program for citizens of a number of foreign states. The 27 countries eligible are mainly in Western Europe, but Australia, New Zealand, Japan and Singapore are also included. It allows these citizens to enter the USA without a visa for tourist purposes or short visits (up to 90 days) without a visa.
Reciprocity is a condition of participation - that is, if the US admits these foreign citizens visa-free, the foreign country must extend the same privilege to US citizens. Hence US citizens don’t need visas to enter most West European nations, as long as they aren’t trying to immigrate or work. There’s still a nominal requirement to be inspected by immigration officers, of course, as SanVito mentioned, but not all European countries were particularly strict about this.
Are you sure you’re remembering correctly? It’s quite possible you don’t have a stamp, but to not go through immigration/customs or have your passport checked at all seems rather strange to me. Did you independent tour company at least have a look and/or copies of your passport?
We were met by the tour operator, and herded directly into a van. We never went anywhere near customs. I remember having my passport tucked away, and never even had to bring it out. Same thing on our way home.
Kind of surprised about the passport, but customs in the EU seems hit or miss, based on my experience.
I definitely had immigration look at my passport on my two trips to Europe, but both times, upon picking up my luggage I looked in vain for anything even faintly resembling a customs officer. No random strangers seemed interested in looking through my luggage either (though my book didn’t have that particular phrase, so maybe I was just being misunderstood), so I just walked away, with my bags full of unmolested smuggled diamonds, smallpox vials, and cheap California wine destined to be poured into locally-labeled bottles.
Both times I had a within-the-EU connecting flight. I went through immigration immediately after getting off the overseas flight, but my luggage wasn’t delivered to me until the connecting flight landed. That may explain it, but seems like a pretty big hole to me.
In the U.S., on the other hand, having a connecting flight won’t save you from customs. For that, you need the airline to temporarily lose your luggage so it’s delivered to your home.
This kind of stuff is really hit or miss.
One thing I had always thought was that it isn’t a part of the Schengen Agreement with regards to foreigners. So if you’re an American traveling from Spain to France, theoretically they are allowed to do normal border controls. I’m not entirely sure of this. This is why I always seem to see there being the EU vs. Non-EU immigration area. The EU gets checked to see if it is EU and the others get normal treatment.
In some airports, it seems that all flights must go through this. I know in Aarhus Denmark this is outside! In others it seems that most flights from other EU countries are dumped into the same terminals as national flights.
Once from Spain to France on a bus, someone looked at our passports at the border. Don’t know why.
As far as whether or not it was stamped? From what I know, it makes very little difference these days whether or not it was stamped. I suppose it could just be there for your benefit or for other people’s benefits. But I think that when they swipe the passport that it goes into a database that at least would be national if not Schengen-wide.
But you know, sometimes they don’t even swipe it! I’ve taken a trip to Spain when I was living in Denmark, and on the way back, the guy looked at my (US) passport and tossed it back without doing anything.
Sorry I couldn’t help, but really I’m more confused about this the more I think about it. My second year in Denmark, my visa had expired. They never sent me a new one after I applied, so I figured we were quits. Was a bit nervous when I left the country and came back a few times, but I figure if I were going to be on some kind of list then, It would have already happened.
I think the deal is that some European countries are so slow at getting visa-related stuff done that it’s very hard to have such a strict interpretation of these things. Personally I doubt many people are picked up on overstaying their visas until they do something else to get attention. I am not sure that the system is capable alerting the authorities to a person with an overstayed visa on the day that he is overstayed and where he is.
Think about it. That would require either
A) an exit stamp, and recording of the date of departure in the database. This is very rare in my experience.
B) the destination country informing the first country that said person is now in the country. I know this information is available in flight manifests, etc, but it doesn’t appear that everytime I return to the US that the Schengen Zone is notified that I’m not there anymore. The US could possibly do this with the EU, but certainly not other countries.
Anyway, I imagine that this will be the case one day though.
In all my international traveling experience (probably around 60 flights), I can only remember two times being checked by customs, once in Russia, and once in the US. That said, there usually was a green (nothing to declare) and red (declared items) line upon exit.
I don’t quite follow what this may or may not explain 