Hi everyone, I am worried because I am traveling in Europe and they did NOT stamp my passport when I entered in Rome!! They saw my U.S. passport and just waved me through, didn't even look at it!!!! This has never happened to me before, is this a new trend? I will be departing Europe through Spain, and I'm worried about what will happen. I do have a lot of stamps in my passport, and I also saved my plane ticket from U.S. to Rome with the date on it, but I don't know how strict they are in Spain! Any thoughts would be appreciated! Many thanks in advance!!

I was in and out of France two years ago with absolutely no evidence in my passport. New passports all have a chip called an RFID tag. Your goings and comings can be detected yards away without you knowing it. Don't worry about it. But you might want to get an RFID blocking wallet so the bad guys with hardware and software can't read your chip. I've read that RFID is going into credit cards next.

It is really quite common in many of the countries. It is extremely easy for any authority to retrieve your exact arrival date, place and airline. A lot of passport stamps are illegible anyway - they have better things to do than turn the pages and examine them.

I don't even pay attention to whether they stamp things or not, I figure that's their job and I don't know their regulations. Some countries do, some don't. I think it's all in a computer, but in any case, if they let you into the country, they've checked it. If they've waved you through, I would presume they know what they are doing.

In the last several years -- my passport has only been stamped maybe 60% of the time.

I have not had my passport stamped but a few times in the last number of years and I usually make a couple of trips to Europe a month.

I believe the authorities now use passenger manifests supplied by the airlines if they really want to track someone. Immigration officials are becoming less and less dependent upon using just passports to identify someone´s movement.

The only time I can remember my passport being stamped in the last few years was in Nairobi. If they waved you through, you're good to go.

The U.S. has almost never stamped my passport in the last 5 years and god knows, they certainly want to keep track of people. That should be an indication regarding other countries.

Yeah, I was kind of disappointed upon returning from our 3 month trip to Europe. Only a handful of the places we visited were stamped in the passport. I had visions of being able to reminisce about our trip by flipping through my passport. Oh well.

The southern countries including France especially going out don't mind on a US or western passport to much. I have been in and out of Spain Italy and 95% of the time they don't even scan it through the computer unless there looking for a western person. I am US citizen too so there you are, but watch out for the Swiss,Germans and Nordic countries so its a good idea to keep your paperwork IE boarding pass etc handy in the back of the passport. And I am flying to and from Asia too. But as the Japanese women in front of me was scanned and stamped so who really knows?

Bottom line is that if your a overstay or did somthing wrong they don't want to be bothered by the paperwork...

If they looked at you, then you are one up on me...

I held it up, the guy continued his conversation with the man next to him, never turned his head towards me or the passport, and he waived me on into Italy!

It was hysterical! I could have held up my airline ticket and this guy would have let me in!

The only time I've had anyone look at the stamps in my passport was at a TSA checkpoint in Chicago.I was making a connection there on the way back from Istanbul and, because it was handy, used my passport rather than my driving license at ID.

The agent went through every page in the passport and then asked what I had been doing in Turkey. I blurted out that my Dean was asking the same question. Before I could explain myself the agent cracked up and waved me through the checkpoint.

I travelled by car from the UK to Spain through the tunnel and no one ever asked for my passport

Just returned from a 3 weeks in France & Italy. Hotels in Italy wanted to review my passport but the hotels in France didn't even ask for them.

You won't believe this. I couldn't believe it at the time. A couple of years ago, we flew to Malaga, with a connection in Paris. At CDG, we walked straight to the new gate. There was nobody there checking passports. Well, when our plane arrived in Malaga and we were walking to get our luggage, We heard someone yelling at people and then we were all stopped. Apparently, the immigration officers went ballistic because the transit passengers didn't have their passports stamped. It was quite a scene. Some passengers were elderly and I really worried for them. Eventually, they walked us all to a room, passing jail cells (I kid you not. One had a man in it). Finally, they figured out what to do and they photo-copied all the passports. Then the officers stopped their tantrums and started to laugh and joke.