Save Your Blank Passport Pages
Immigration procedures vary by country—and so do the sizes of the visas or stamps they’ll add to your passport. If you travel a lot, you may have noticed that some immigration agents will stamp your passport’s valuable blank pages even if they don’t need a whole page. If you’re worried about this happening, and running out of pages, remember that you can cover blank pages with Post-It notes and, more importantly, ask the agents not to stamp on particular pages. Saving pages now could save you having to renew your passport sooner than you’d like!
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Hot damn! sure wish I needed this advice…lucky you! Me, I will be begging for the gate keepers’ autograph so it fills the pages…smile..and really thanks for your thoughtful and loving kindness to help us all. I can tell you also have a sense of humor…you need it i am sure!
Additional pages can always be added so a renewal would not be necessary.
Many countries don’t issue a visa on additional pages, so it would be a problem if you had to get one.
Can anybody expand on this hint more?
What is the cover a blank page with a Post-It note trick?
How does one go about asking an agent not to stamp on particular pages?
Are some pages reserved or unique? TIA.
Sorry if I wasn’t clear. So let’s say you have only a few blank pages because you travel a lot. You have a bunch of pages that have only 1, 2 or 3 stamps but only a few fully blank pages. In case you travel to a country that requires you to have two full blank pages to get their visas I simply put a post it note over the blank page so they know not to stamp it. It doesn’t always work but usually it does. Otherwise, you will have to send your passport in for more pages which is a pain and costs $
I’m not sure you can renew early. But you can send your passport in to have pages added, which I had to do recently. It always makes me nervous to let my passport out of my hands but I ran out of pages.
The State Dept passport agency can sew in extra passport pages twice. If you travel a lot, when you renew, check the box at the top of the application for passport (DS-11) check the box for a 52 page non standard passport. As for immigration stamps, Johnny is correct, you can ask the immigration agent to stamp in the blank spots and save the blank pages for later. I just point to the spot and say, “Stamp here, please”.
As a frequent intl traveler with an Indian passport, that is what I did.. Point to the page and the spot on the page. My intention was to keep entry and exit stamps for each country in chronological order. It helped tremendously when for my US Citizenship, I had to list all my travel for the past 5 years with entry and exit dates from the US. Since the US has no immigration stamp during departure, I had to rely on the entry stamps for the various countries to determine the dates. That is where keeping it in sequence helps.
Also, as an Indian passport holder, I always knew to save pages as most countries do not issue a visa on additional page. It is a security control. And when I applied for my US Passport I asked for the 52 page booklet. It has no extra cost.
Good idea! I asked once, to no avail. Sometimes I think immigration officials just stamp the middle of a fresh page in the back of the passport just to be difficult. I will put some post-it notes on my remaining fresh pages.
Sewn-in pages is going away soon in the USA. You’ll have to buy a whole new one if you run out before it’s expired.
Where did you hear that? No indication here http://travel.state.gov/content/passports/english/passports/services/pages.html