I haven’t heard this song in years and for some reason I got it in my head this morning. Weird.
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For a friend…if one tells the Canadian BSO that the visit is for 3 days, would the US CBP know if one ended up staying a week longer?
Neither side stamps on car trip, which would be sad if I still needed a passport.
There was a Locked Up Abroad episode with the real dude that movie was about. All those episodes are chilling. All scary. The scariest ones were about people who hadn’t done a damn thing.
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Thats weird. In the 1990s I was in a US consulate listening to my then GF and other non-US people getting the third degree over minor issues. They were going over the passport of one guy because their records of his US entries and exits didn’t match. At the time I assumed it was exit stamps on the passport but apparently not.
What happens at a land border (Mexico or Canada)? Do you get a stamp then?
edit: another poster says they don’t stamp either way at the land borders, so what happens if I drive to Canada, fly to Japan, then fly to Los Angeles? Will they let me back in?
edit2: Its interesting how many places still reply on stamps, rather than records from scanned passports. I had assumed that countries have reciprocal arrangements for passport data so that your movements are always tracked centrally. This would be why Israel had to clone legitimate Australian passports to get into Dubai, rather than just inventing fictional ones.
So now we know, you can print your own visa on a passport and have it accepted in the back blocks of Turkey.
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I think the problem with the US system is that they don’t rely on passport stamps, instead they do their own bookkeeping, something they sometimes get wrong, and because you and I don’t get a passport exit stamp, in essence a receipt, without which we have no way to prove our innocence when things go pear shaped.
Mind you passport stamps seem to be on their way out, Hong Kong doesn’t give them out any more - but you do get a small paper receipt (travel thru HK more then 4 times a year and you can get a barcode on the back of your passport that will let you thru a turnstyle)
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I took a boat trip round Thousand Islands, and when the boat returned to Canadia, I was briefly detained because my (UK) passport hadn’t been stamped when I entered the country by road from the US a day or two earlier. Obviously, even the border guards themselves aren’t totally clear on how that is supposed to work.
Let me tell you, you haven’t known fear until you’ve been caught in the jaws of Canadia’s brutal regime.
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The hypocrisy runs strong here. I don’t want to elaborate further but I have to deal daily with turkish citizens and their passports. I often have problems reconstructing where they were staying because those bloody turkish border control forget to put exit stamps into their passports.
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For you I feel.
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Two things: the last 10 years have brought a resurgence of the “80’s sound” among up and coming alt groups; second, I believe there was a very good reason Daft Punk sought him out to include on their last release. 
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The second time my Budapest language school sent me to the Ukraine I stayed 2 days past my Visa (I was talked into it by co-workers). We got pulled aside at departure and I got harangued by the border guards (Who all toted machine guns of some kind - this was 1993? Probably still a thing, though). My translator friend said they wanted some sort of money for a fine - how much did I have? I pulled out the fat wad of Ukrainian whatevers - about an inch thick, and probably worth a couple of bucks - word had it color photocopiers were currently illegal since that’s what was supposedly used to print the money in the first place. The guards demanded other currency - like deutchmarks or us dollars, and I pulled out my Hungarian forints - about $10 worth, probably. They eventually gave up in disgust.
But I made sure to obey my visa exactly the next time; I have no idea why I got it for a short time - I had planned on leaving early, but why didn’t I just get it for a few extra days just in case?
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When I entered the country through a non-traditional backroads route in the summer of 2007, they still toted machine guns. Ukraine had just lifted visa requirements that year to allow free movement.
It took some convincing to get the guard to believe what was written on the state-run website, or I would have been kicked off the bus there at the Moldovan border.
Still - summertime, beautiful wheat fields, friendly locals - it wouldn’t have been the end of the world.
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During a year I spent living and working in Ecuador in the early '00’s, some friends and I traveled around in Peru and Bolivia for several weeks. I don’t remember the exact circumstances, but IIRC there was a tourist spot right on the border where people would routinely cross into Bolivia to go to a market, then would come back into Peru. You checked out at the Peruvian customs booth, walked about 50 meters, checked in at the Bolivian one, saw the sights, then turned around, checked out of Bolivia, walked 50 meters and checked back in to Peru, in our case, in the span of about an hour and a half.
“Somehow” one of my stamps was missing on my way back in (the fourth and final customs stop) from this bizarre transaction, and I was detained and grilled by customs. It was pretty amazing that they could keep straight faces shaking me down and pretending that they had no way of knowing where I’d come from, with the booth I’d just gone through a literal stone’s throw away. Especially given that I had stamps from them from about an hour and half before. It made more sense once they said there would be a hefty fee, and I asked how much, and they gave me the “How much do you have.” Luckily for me a little goes a long way in Bolivia…
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I wonder if one were to be vigilant and making sure your passport got stamped or not and you called out the person at customs over it if they’d get pissy at you for catching them trying to screw you over.
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