"To be fair, she is only bending the rules a little bit. "

To be fair she is only intending to break the law - a law which if she is caught results in serious sanctions against her. This isn't a speeding ticket that can be forgotten the next day.

She should also consider what the airline is going to do when they see that her return date is more than 90 days after her departure date. Airlines are justifiably twitchy if they think someone might be refused entry on arrival & so might refuse her boarding in the first place. It costs them an awful lot of money if someone on their flight is refused entry. I'd also check the terms of her insurance - it's almost certain that she won't be covered by it for the time she's illegally in Schengen and if it's like my insurance a single trip of more than 90 days isn't covered anyway.

The risk may be low, but it exists and the effects can be major. As I've pointed out aside from the immediate effects of jail / fine / chucked out of the country at her own expense she will immediately become a "person of interest" to other countries just from that mark in her passport.

My hubby travels on his CDN passport and has had it stamped at entry and exit for every country we have visited in Europe.

I travel on my UK passport and have never had it stamped at entry or exit for any country in Europe. The only stamp I have is for entry to the USA from Oct 2010.

"After her 89 days in Italy she will use her US passport for leaving Italy and entering UK." And if she then leaves the UK on her other passport, the immigration officer (and airline check-in if flying, and possibly train check-in if taking the Eurostar) is going to want to know why the computer system doesn't show her entering. Whether s/he will care about breaking Schengen rules is another matter. If she's going to pull this stunt she should enter the UK on the other passport.

"She should also consider what the airline is going to do when they see that her return date is more than 90 days after her departure date."

She could tell them that she plans to spend a month in UK or Croatia or anywhere else outside the Schengen area, so she'll be less than 90 days in Schengen.

"My hubby travels on his CDN passport and has had it stamped at entry and exit for every country we have visited in Europe."

If you are visiting Schengen countries then the only place it would be stamped is on entry to Schengen & exit from Schengen.

... and often not even then.

Some of you are making it sound like alarms go off and red lights flash when a passport is scanned that has no trace of the original entry point on it. I would say that there are probably at least 50,000 legal entry points to the Schengen zone -- airports, roads, seaports, etc., and I would be astounded if even 10,000 of them have scanners linked to the Schengen data base, particularly on road crossings and ports. Therefore, the immigration officers are never in the least surprised if they get the 'not in data base' indicator when they scan a passport, and sometimes they ask a question or two. More often, they won't even ask a question because 'not in data base' is <b>good</b>. The data base is to keep track of bad people. On the rare occasions I present my American passport in Europe (on the road, leaving or entering Schengen...), nobody has ever said a word to me, even though I never enter Europe with it, because I prefer the short EU line in airports.

kerouac - I have presented my US passport to airline check-in when returning to the US, and not the passport I used when entering the country. I have then been asked why there is no record of my entry.

alanRow - true.

So far we havent visited two+ countries on the same trip, so every trip was to one country in the schengen. He has had it stamped every time thought (makes me jealous because I want stamps too hahahaha)

Thursaysd, I present my US passport to check in for the flight to the US (obviously to avoid that ESTA business), and then I use my EU passport to go through immigration (to avoid the longer line). No mention, ever. Actually, I think I do have one French exit stamp in my US passport, because I did give it once to see if they would stamp it (very rare in France).

The only nationality 'discrepancy' that ever got me a question was once in Charlotte, NC flying to London when somebody noticed that the nationality on my airline employee ID did not match the one on the passport. So I just showed them the other passport. Case settled.

I may be missing something here but are people saying that it is illegal (in which countries) to possess passports from more than one country and to use them at difering times?

News to me. I have known many friends do it. One has 6.

I guess I am a girlscout. I don't think it matters that the OP's daughter is intending to overstay for only a few days. I think the OP should be teaching her daughter that one should follow the law, not figure out how to skirt it. This is not anal, it is citizenship.

So, kerouac, are you saying that I'm lying? Hasn't it occurred to you that that things change over time and happen differently in different countries?

No, I am saying that I have had different experiences, that's all. Why are your hackles raised? Have I offended you?

>>I may be missing something here but are people saying that it is illegal (in which countries) to possess passports from more than one country and to use them at difering times?<<

I don't think anyone said that (but the thread is getting pretty long and I may have missed it). What most are saying is that using two different passports to evade the 90 day rules is illegal. (it is the person that it limited to 90 days, not the document(s) )

It's about the 90-day rule limit. Not about how many passports a person has.

Just imagine someone with 12 passports, each allowing a visa-free stay of 90 days. Does it mean that person is allowed to stay 3 years in Schengen?

kerouac - the implication of your post was that since you had never experienced an entry/exit match check it didn't happen. Why else bother to post when I had already said that it had happened to me, and was therefore a possibility to be taken into account?

Lots of people drive over the speed limit and don't get caught - doesn't mean it's legal, tho.

One has to wonder what the need is to HAVE to travel over the 90-day limit on this one particular trip. Will the daughter never have an opportunity to travel to Europe again? Why place most of future travel at risk for so little gain?

Why not work within the law? 90 days is a generous allowance and 180 days is a very small burden.

Cortona is just a skip and a hop away from Croatia and Slovenia. Surely she can spend a few weekends in those countries to cut down on her 90 day allowance in Schengen countries and save a few days for the end of her semester to travel with her friends? She could cross over the Adriatic Sea from Rimini or Ancona - it'll be fun to visit another country...

Just saying, there's more than one way to skin a cat - without going illegal or juggling two passports. Keep it simple and keep it legal.

This is a side question, I just studied my US passport again and found that I get stamped every single time everywhere I went in Europe, going in or out, by air, by train or by car from Montenegro, Slovenia,Croatia, Austria, Benelux, Chunnel crossing, Praha, Denmark, Sweden, France, Spain, etc. I read that some of you often didn't even get your US passport stamped while traveling in Europe, is that really true or just an assumption because it's always so casual and speedy? I wonder if they stamp my passport so religiously because I travel in and out of Schengen too often or what. On the plus side I can reconstruct all my travel dates with precision.

She doesn't HAVE to travel, she WANTS to travel; somehow her college program is not willing to get the students the visas that they need to do this legally (by having the course end 1 day short, giving them a day to return home). The OP, her mother, wants advice on how her daughter can sneak around the Schengen rules. In a nutshell. The fact that the daughter has two passports is either a blessing (according to the OP) or something that could end up confusing the student and is a potential for her to get booted with repercussions. If it were my daughter (who did study in Italy several years ago but with the visa that allowed her travel post program), I would either be looking at the Consulate for a visa or telling the daughter to travel in non-Schengen countries.