“Passport records do not include evidence of travel such as entrance/exit stamps, visas, residence permits, etc., since this information is entered into the passport book after it is issued.”
http://travel.state.gov/passport/npic/npic_872.html
Or perhaps you information on this question is more accurate than the actual State Department.
LOL
Ohhhhkay. It just absolutely does not make sense the Government doesn't keep records. I have to pass that declaration form forward to Agents who presumably do more than toss them in a bin, that awaits a BFI truck. So let me clarify, the government definitely keeps tabs on those who enter or leave this country and those records are stored two aisles over, from the Ark of the Covenant. Here is an article by a fellow from Newsweek: http://current.newsweek.com/budgettravel/2008/12/whats_in_your_government_trave.html Synopsis: The oversize white envelope bore the blue logo of the Department of Homeland Security. Inside, I found 20 photocopies of the government's records on my international travels. Every overseas trip I've taken since 2001 was noted. I had requested the files after I had heard that the government tracks "passenger activity." Starting in the mid-1990s, many airlines handed over passenger records. Since 2002, the government has mandated that the commercial airlines deliver this information routinely and electronically. It continues Here is a page of what those records look like:
I would think my government to be incompetent boobs if they didn't keep records.
Not that I want them to but it is a government
What say you now? LOL
But Wait! There's more....
(click the title for the entire article)
Most travellers have never seen a PNR, and few people know what information is in the PNR's about them, or how it gets there. But with
CAPPS-II and
Secure Flight, you need to know: PNR's are the records about each airline passenger that are being used USA government's Secure Flight (formerly named "CAPPS-II") passenger surveillance and permission system and "no-fly" lists, and compiled into the Automated Targeting System (ATS) and other databases of the Transportation Security Agency (TSA) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) divisions of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
One of my old customers was American Airlines and I was very aware of the SABRE project and how it would interface with the government and the rest of the world. But read the link above and see how extensive the info is used, how it is collected and who has access to it.
Passport records do not include evidence of travel such as entrance/exit stamps I think this is a little bit Clintonesque. What the US probably does not have is information regarding all the visas (usually just stamped into the passport) that foreign countries give.
But the US government definitely has a record of every time you enter the country, or at least it used to. I saw mine once when when the immigration (or customs, not sure which) guy had his computer screen turned too much toward me. I also observed that, when I was making regular trips, the customs folks stopped asking me questions about what I was carrying after they once made me open my luggage. (My regular answer was, "A weeks worth of dirty laundry." One time the customs guy sternly said to me, "Open it." I wasn't asked again until there was a long interval between trips.)
ML/NJ
