Two of my most treasured possessions are my first and second passports. They are jammed from cover-to-cover with passport stamps from around the world, telling many stories about my life and the direction it has taken. But will these relics of past generations soon become distant relics? If my last trip to the United Kingdom was any indication, I fear passport stamps will become more difficult to obtain in the years ahead.
Will Passport Stamps Continue In Our New World?
I strive for an ordered life in all areas. Organization does not come naturally to me, but with my wife’s help I have worked toward being a much more orderly and organized person over the last few years. That includes proper accounting of our finances, clean closets and dressers, and organized files on my computer.
But there’s one area where disorder reigns – my passport. The beauty of a passport is the different colors and shapes of passport stamps, often overlapping one another. While my passports are always filled with European Union stamps, they too tell a story: Barcelona, Berlin, Copenhagen, Milan, Paris, Berlin, and Reykjavik provide not just a diversity of stamps (though they all look similar) but vivid memories of business and leisure trips I will forever cherish.
Interspersed among those stamps, however, is a collection of visas and more exotic stamps that also bring back happy thoughts of my adventures through the world:
Which leads us to my concern.
During a trip to the United Kingdom earlier this year, I asked a border agent to stamp my passport. Historically, the UK has stamped passports but even prior to pandemic began phasing out automatic stamping, though it was still available upon request. The agent said:
“I’m sorry. We are no longer allowed to stamp passports due to COVID-19.”
My heart skipped a beat. Not so much because I needed another UK stamp in my passport, but because I imagined a world in which concerns over virus transmission meant passports are no longer stamped.
Passports themselves are rather quaint…talk about a vestige of the past. Yet I just cannot see digital passports and visas replacing physical passports in my lifetime: not every nation is technically savvy and the physical document is not depended upon internet connection or a charged battery. Plus, physical passports are theoretically more difficult to forge than electronic documents.
Hopefully stamping will not be a casualty of the pandemic.
CONCLUSION
Dear readers, this is a minor issue among minor issue. My heart aches for the death this pandemic has brought on, which is far more important than the sustainment of passport stamps. Yet I do hope that more countries will not take the British approach. The passport stamps are a unique beauty that provide happy (and sometimes not so happy) memories for a lifetime.
Would you be devastated if other nations stopped stamping passports?
I also like to collect stamps, mainly from smaller less traveled countries. I think countries should allow stamps if they’re requested. I know Australia refused to stamp mine in 2019 and HKG did away with stamps years ago.
My favorite, Ouagadougou, when it was the capital of Upper Volta, not Burkina Faso. Flew on UTA on the way to Abidjan. Got off the plane at about 0300 just to get the stamp. One guy just stamped in and out.
COVID is accelerating what was already an unstoppable train. I share your melancholy about it, because I’ve had some great trips memorialized by my passport, and I’m sad that I’ll never again feel the joy of needing to add extra pages to my passport. But I knew that would be the case. Little did I know that last February would be the last time my (now expired) passport would get any use (but Australia and US Global Entry, so no stamps).
I”ve had the same experience you detailed in the UK at several countries in the past few years: Hong Kong, South Korea, and most recently upon landing at Heathrow in Jan 2020. When I asked the immigration official if they’d mind stamping my passport nonetheless, he replied with characteristic British wit:
“I’m afraid they’ve done away with that little pleasure, haven’t they?”
I, too, treasure my passport stamps, and will be very sad to earn them on fewer and fewer trips as the world digitizes.
Funny that in my last 10 years of international travel 99% of those travels were to the EU and since I have a EU passport I don’t have a single stamp. I just checked and the only stamp I have in my passports in the last 10 years is from Japan.
Why not? They’re trying to get rid of most anything fun in the name of safety.
The US should bomb any country that discontinues passport stamps!
I have an old passport that is completely full. I have another that has only 2 empty pages BUT has additional pages, which I added because the free practice was ending. I could have gone without the additional pages but when free things are ending, many people want it.
My current passport is pitiful. Due to the pandemic, it is a large version (more pages) but NO stamps.
OK, as far as the first sentence, maybe not bomb.
Someone I know (and could it be me?) stamped their own passport with a museum stamp that looks like a passport stamp, including a date. Is this illegal?
I don’t know, but I’ve done it too!
I know someone with a treasured Jersey stamp. It looks like the UK stamp except it says “Jersey” instead of “Heathrow”. Looks like I’ll never get that.
Jersey is one of the Channel Islands, situated between England and France and closer to France. The Germans occupied it in World War II. There was a TV show with a detective, Jim Bergerac. plying the island. That was 30 years ago.
I absolutely love paging thru our passports looking at the stamps. It will be sad to think the stamps are a thing of the past.
I’m not so sure it is virus related. I was in the UK in February 2020 before the virus and they had already stopped stamping.
Once US citizens were no longer allowed to add pages to their passport (2015?) I accepted the fact that stamp collecting could become a costly hobby. 52 pages can go quickly, and while I enjoy looking back at past travels, I eventually accepted that I was better off without this vanity project. Making 52 pages last 10 years is a challenge in and of itself.
For every proudly obtained Burkina Faso, there’s a smudgy Mexico stamped smack in the middle of a fresh page. Grrrr!
I’m surprised they’ve lasted this long: after all, it’s not as though the official record is the stamp…but rather the computer entries, which must show where we’ve been, and when.
I keep my old passports, including one that gave me some grief: Iran, Libya, Kuwait, Saudi, including some multiples, plus lots of Egyptian pages ( that particular passport had a hand-written Arabic translation of my details: a requirement for entering Libya at that time). Needless to say it caused a lot of interest at immigration desks in other countries ( although nothing too bad, with only one exception).
This current passport is the only one in more than 40 years that will expire before it’s full, thanks to CoVID. I get double size ones, but Australia is eliminating them progressively, so no longer an option.
Usually on the amendments and endorsements page!
@Matthew
Why in the world don’t you use the e-gates in the UK? I would run of out space in my passport so prematurely if I didn’t use the e-gates.
What I can’t stand is when border agents stamp any free page willy-nilly and outside the prescribed quadrants. I find most Italian border agents don’t take kindly to requests that they stamp a specific page. Northern European agents are far more accommodating. Of course, Japan takes the cake with their stickers instead of stamps.
I generally use e-gates, but they were closed during this trip.
For the past 14 months, we’ve all heard COVID be used as an excuse for a variety of surprising actions. In some cases, there’s enough validity to legitimately shroud the true intent of the action behind the COVID virus. But no more passport stamping because…of COVID? What a lame excuse. The UK should just be honest, as in: we’re trying to save time, saving money on ink, etc. But COVID is the reason? B.S.
Thank you for the well written article. Apparently, the UK Border Force have stopped stamping passports for Americans since 20 May, 2019. The last time I received a UK passport stamp was in July 2019. I had to specifically request one but my request was granted. I have seen on the internet some passport stamps from Heathrow Airport dated January 2021 so I can confirm that stamps are still being issued.