The US asks if you have been to places like Iraq, Iran, Libya etc since 2011. If you do, you can’t ESTA, you need a visa.
Work would like me to go to Iraq, which is fine. They’ll pay for me to get a US Visa too.
Trouble is in 20 years time when I want to go to NY for my kids wedding or whatever, I’ll still have to answer “yes” to the “I visited Iraq” question, and I won’t be working for the company that sent me there, so I’d have to go for the long arduous process of prostrating myself at the US embassy to beg for a visa, incurring a large expense to do so. Just because the stamp isn’t in my active passport doesn’t mean I can answer “no” to the question
It’s not like Israel, where the stamp would cause problems but they don’t ask (or the other way round where an Israeli stamp would cause problems going to Iran).
Even when I apply for a visa and have to list every country (often in a comically small box with like 100 characters max length), like with India, it only asks “what could tries have you visited in the last 10 years”
I wonder how that works for people that went there because their country joined one neocon middle eastern venture or another. Does it count if you went there for invasion purposes?
I have two because I provided a letter from my organisation backing me having two as I travelled frequently and often had a passport away at an embassy waiting for a visa and need to be able to travel at short notice.
Since then I’ve reduced the number of visa based countries I’ve needed to go to (more have gone electronic), and countries have reduced stamps, throw in covid, and it’s to the point that I doubt I’ll fill my passports up before the 10 years has expired. It’s a shame really, the stamps in past passports are a great momento, but places like Hong Kong, Israel, Canada, Australia have all stopped stamping in the last few years.
Guess the lack of stamps means record holding has moved from the passport into the cloud. While the distributed record keeping was certainly more privacy friendly, the new method makes it certainly easier for nation states.
> Without prejudice to the provisions on travel documents applicable to national border controls, Member States shall grant Union citizens leave to enter their territory with a valid identity card or passport
Have you travelled to, or been present in Iraq, Syria, Iran, Sudan, Libya, Somalia, North Korea or Yemen on or after March 1, 2011?
Using a second passport, fake passport, alias, fake glasses and moustache doesnt make a differnce to the answer to that question. Its not even a workaround.
I meant that it is not legal to use a second passport as a workaround to support a lie about your travel history. Lying to enter the US is illegal regardless of the number of passports you have.
That's true. This only affects those who have visited Iran, Iraq, North Korea, Sudan, Syria, Libya, Somalia and Yemen on or after March 1, 2011, and they're still not disqualified, but I do understand the frustration at the inconvenience (although none of this will affect me since I am a US and EU citizen).
You can get a second US passport with limited validity. Great when you need to apply for visas but also have other international travel going on. And sometimes it's convenient for hiding visa stamps of one country from another country.
Work would like me to go to Iraq, which is fine. They’ll pay for me to get a US Visa too.
Trouble is in 20 years time when I want to go to NY for my kids wedding or whatever, I’ll still have to answer “yes” to the “I visited Iraq” question, and I won’t be working for the company that sent me there, so I’d have to go for the long arduous process of prostrating myself at the US embassy to beg for a visa, incurring a large expense to do so. Just because the stamp isn’t in my active passport doesn’t mean I can answer “no” to the question
It’s not like Israel, where the stamp would cause problems but they don’t ask (or the other way round where an Israeli stamp would cause problems going to Iran).
Even when I apply for a visa and have to list every country (often in a comically small box with like 100 characters max length), like with India, it only asks “what could tries have you visited in the last 10 years”