Is all your past border crossing information stored somwhere?

Question

Is all your past air travel/border crossing information stored somwhere?

When you travel overseas and immigration checks your passport at the airports, can they track all your past travels, even in you changed your passport and don´t have the stamps anymore?

In other words, if someone gets a NEW passport, will that computerized information be linked to his or her old passport number? If not, does the old history dies with the old passport.

I am curious because a friend in Europe works for a large, international company. He has two passports (guess he said one got "lost") because if he travels to the Middle East on business, he'd have a hard time going to a place like Israel on business later. Some people say that biometric chip in your passport is storing your information, but from what I've read it merely contains a copy of your photo, so they know no one tampered with the passport.

Answer 1

Your information is stored in the immigration and visa departments in various countries which have issued you visas. If the country does not require a visa (for example, some of the Schengen countries do not require visas for US citizens traveling with an American passport unless they plan to stay over 90 days), then they do not have a permanent record of your visit there.

Countries which do require you to have a visa, even a transit visa, do keep records. I have traveled to the same country in the Middle East twice since October of last year. Both times I needed to apply for a visa to visit my destination, and both applications asked if I had traveled there before, and the approximate dates of my travel. Obviously, on my most recent visit, I had the exact date of the previous visa, since it is in my passport, but my other visits were more than 20 years ago, and I was only able to give approximate months and definite years. They probably did not care much, as I was a minor during all my older visits, but they did ask for the information, and they did verify my previous visits, as they contacted my father, who was the person I was going to visit, and verified that I was the same person who visited him there when I was a kid. He told me that when the immigration and visa department called him, they had the exact dates of my previous visits. I had not provided that information to them, so they must have had it on record somewhere. (And I pity the poor person who had to go dig through the records--I am sure records from the early 80s are not on any computer system.) However, I should note that the Middle Eastern country I visited is very concerned with terrorism, and not allowing any suspect people into the country (there are citizens who are not allowed to return despite holding passports from that country because they have shown up on terrorist watch lists, probably provided by the US or other intelligence services).

As for your friend, he is probably being overly cautious with the two passports, and is likely to get in more trouble if the two passports are discovered than he would be if he traveled on only one, unless, of course, they were issued by different countries. When I was going to the Middle East once a year (visiting an Arab country, not Israel), the rule of thumb for everyone, including businessmen, was that you should, if you wished to visit both an Arab country and Israel, schedule an intermediate stop somewhere in a "neutral" country--Cyprus was very popular, because it doesn't take you very far out of your way. Both sides, the Arabs and the Israelis, look at your visa stamps and take note of whether or not you have been in "enemy territory", but for some reason they put more emphasis on whether or not you have tried to enter a country immediately after being in one from the "other side".

That fact was verified for me several years ago when I was speaking to someone with whom I was acquainted from my previous place of employment. She went to the Middle East with a tour group after 9/11, and their itinerary seemed peculiar to her until I explained it to her. First, they visited Israel and saw all the Biblical sights. Then they flew to Greece for one day, spending the night in Athens, and then turned around and went to Jordan, to see the ruins at Petra. After being in Jordan, they were able to fly directly to Egypt to see the antiquities there--they didn't have to have one night in a "neutral" place. She told me that the tour group she went with does two itineraries. One is the one she and her husband went on, and the other is sort of the reverse, with the tour group going to Egypt first, then Jordan, then Greece, and then Israel.

When you think about it, it makes very little sense to have to take one night outside the area in order to be able to get into either Israel or an Arab state without any hassle. Someone doing something illegal can wait the extra day in Greece or Cyprus or any other country and then proceed on their naughty way, but that one day and night elsewhere seems to be key to the countries involved.

As for the chip you mentioned, I only know what is contained in the chips in the new US passports. The chip does not store new information. What it contains is a copy of the information page of your passport, including your name, a copy of your photo, your passport number, place of issue, and your date and place of birth. You are basically correct when you say that it contains that information so they know that no one has tampered with your passport, only it does not simply contain a copy of your photo--it contains everything on that information page. It does not contain other information, such as border crossing information, and the machines which can scan those types of passports are unable to write anything on the chip.

There is one more piece of information which is logged for US citizens, and I know about it because I asked at passport control when I came home from my most recent trip. The information is kept on all US citizens, and if they have an old passport without a chip, it has to be entered by hand. They simply log that you are leaving the country. They do not log where you are going, only that you are leaving. When you return home, they either scan or enter by hand the information that you came home. That is done not for any sinister reason, but as a protection for US citizens traveling abroad. US citizens are frequently the targets of kidnappings, or could be injured or killed while abroad, either by something innocent like a traffic accident, or by something worse, like a terrorist attack. The US keeps those records so that if you go missing, they can let the Department of State know that you did, in fact, leave the country. The Department of State then has to track down your relatives and try and find out where you went, as that information is not stored. I was told by the woman at passport control that that measure was planned after the Lockerbie air disaster, and at first only monitored people departing from certain large airports, such as LAX or JFK, as it all had to be entered by hand and was very time consuming. After 9/11, when it became clear that US citizens might be targeted anywhere in the world, they began to make plans for the chipped passports, and began entering passport numbers only (since that number is tied to the rest of your information in the State Department's records) to keep track of US citizens going abroad. The recent requirement for passports for all travel, including Canada and Mexico, is the final step in that plan to keep citizens safe. I asked her if I might look at her monitor when she scanned my passport, and she said yes. What I saw was that when she scanned it, a screen popped up with my personal information, and the date when I had departed and the port of departure. Under that, there appeared a note about my date of arrival back in the US, and my port of entry. I don't know if they keep that information on record permanently, or if it is purged, but it really doesn't concern me too much, as it makes no mention of where I went.

Finally, when you get a new passport, the old information disappears. The only thing they keep track of is your former passports, where they were issued, their numbers, and your name on previous passports. That last bit is because people's names change, most often when women get married and take a new surname, or get divorced, and get their maiden name back.

I hope that information is of use to you.