Only Two Pages
12/10/08 15:38
After 15 hours on planes and in airports, I was
finally back in Oregon. The descent was beautiful:
deep forests, snow already covering some of the
higher mountains, a smoking volcano. We landed and
passed quickly into Homeland Security’s border
control area. The line was gracefully short. Within
15 minutes, my passport had been stamped,
gratuitous questions asked, and I was through and
on my way to customs. Normally, I rarely look at my
passport, but for some reason I did this time.
I’d like to know more about how passport control officers think and are trained. This one was typical: he carefully flipped through the stamps, checked visas that had been inserted, and asked me what I did for a living. Some seem genuinely interested in what you were doing abroad, especially in the UK and the US. Some try much less hard to be interested. I never get questions in the rest of Europe or Asia. They are more likely to carefully study each page, flipping back and forth (I assume) to find the entry and exit marks.
This one was very polite. He seemed chipper and happy, and when he pressed down on his stamp the mechanical thump seemed to echo his “Have a good day.” I flipped open my passport to see where he had placed the stamp. This seems to vary enormously wherever I go. If I need a visa to enter the country, then the stamp is often somewhere near the visa, even on top of another stamp. Others seem to look for blank spots on already-crowded pages, filling in the edges so that you have to look hard to read what the stamp says. But this officer placed his on the last partially full page. Flipping the next page, I could see only two more full blank sheets. This was a new passport two years ago, and already it was full — almost wholly from the past year. And I anticipate at least five more stamps in the coming month.
I sighed a bit and made a mental note: check the State Department’s website on getting extra visa pages. Quickly.
