Passport Validity: How Long?
 

On another thread it was stated that certain countrise require your passport to be valid for a specified number of days <b>after</b> your proposed departure.

That validity period seems to vary between 90 and 180 days at least.

My (rhetorical I admit) question is why? Why would a country care if a passport is valid for one day or a million days after you have left?

And how was 90 days selected? Why not 86 or 27 or 59?

I am certain somebody out there has <b>the</b>(and which will probably seem very &quot;obvious&quot;) answer.

Sorry for the typo..that should read &quot;countries&quot;

Poland allows visitors from the USA a 90 day/3 month visa free visit. Many from the USA travel to Germany before their 90 day visit expires and then re-enter for another 90 days.
I have also read of one man, travelling on his wife's passport by mistake! Search each country for their tourist information.

More information. Obviously English reading skills come in handy. A Polish note tells that a visitors passport need be valid for 3 months after the proposed or intended date of departure. Theoretically a visitor could pose a one day visit and then only need a passport with 91 days till expiration. If he is staying 3 months then he needs 6 months of passport life. Simple?

I dunno, Dukey...maybe so in case you are hospitalized your passport won't expire before you can be repatriated.

&gt;&gt;Why not 86 or 27 or 59?&lt;&lt; What a good idea! Why don't we suggest it to the State Dept. ;-)

I appreciate the thoughts and comments but still see nothing that explains why a government cares about the length of time a passport is valid after a person has <b>actually left</b>the country.

GSteed; I am not talking about how long they can <b>stay/B&gt; because I understand those numbers are probably arbitrarily set or set based on various political and soci-economic factors.

But why would Poland or any other country care about how long my passport is valid for if I left there and never came back?

Obviously I am missing something (probably huge) here so someone please help me visualize it!</b>

Apologies for the excessive bolding above.

I think Heimdall ha explained it - in case something (like an accident) prevents you leaving when you intended to. They don't care about it when you are actually leaving, only when you enter.

Note, USA passport renewal in Poland takes one week!

There are now two questions:
- why would a government care about passport validity dates?
- if they do, why set 90 (or whatever) days?

Obviously, hard and fast rules about passport validity can't have any logical basis: the UK and US manage perfectly well without such rules for most visitors, both countries have a near-obsession about illegal immigration, but not even the most monomaniac aliens under the bed detectives in either country blame the absence of a passport validity rule for their illegal immigration &quot;problem&quot;.

In Britain, though, there IS such a rule for visa nationals. As in the US, Britain's main criterion for imposing visa requirements on some nationalities is that they're the nationalities with the biggest incidence of complications. Or at any rate that's the official line (some sources say Australians have the biggest incidence of overstays - but how could our pubs function without them?).

Now the sad truth about most nationalities that need visas for the UK is that, for most of their citizens, life as a free person at home can be a great deal worse than life in a UK illegal migrant detention centre. If you're - say - a poor Ghanaian, it can be very tempting to overstay your visa. And - as I understand it - it can be difficult to deport someone back home if their passport's out of date. Some countries - Zimbabwe is notorious for this - simply won't let people with invalid passports back.

More importantly, as I understand it, even civilised poor countries - like India - can have such convoluted bureaucracies that deporting an overstayer with a passport past its validity date can create problems, lengthening the time (and therefore, since the UK has to pay for the board, keep and security costs of a detainee, expense) of an overstayer.

That's why Britain does what it does. Why 180 days? Well, there has to be a line, and officials are paid to create such lines. We obviously don't want everyone to be forced to have 10 years' validity, or else we'd get no visitors. Six months is enough to cater for some gentle wristslapping on Indians who get sick or Ukrainians who meet the man of their dreams and &quot;forget&quot; to catch the booked return flight.

Now this may not explain why Italy makes Americans have passports that are valid for months after they go home. If, of course, Italy actually does have such a requirement: the assertions on the Web that it does are rarely accompanied by anything so tedious as evidence.

But one possible explanation. American in Italy (or Poland, or wherever, because it IS true that some countries do have such rules) gets sick, recovers after a month and presents himself - now broke - at the airline desk to get home. Airline MIGHT refuse to to take him, because, with an invalid (or at any rate aparently invalid) passport, how does it know said American will be allowed in. If the passenger's refused entry, the airline would get fined - and have to take the passenger back.

Whether the airline's analysis is accurate or not (British passports NEVER really get invalid, since there's always an absolute right for most Britons to be admitted to the UK, and doubtless the rule's the same in the US), the airline might well refuse to carry the dubious passenger. So what does the host country do with this destitute in the meantime?

In most of Europe, the destitute would now be a charge on the State. Yes that possibility could be avoided with more complex rules. But all nations want relatively simple things passport officials can deal with quickly. Near-certainty the visitor will be allowed into his native country is important to many countries.

Thank you, everyone, for the information.

It makes much more sense now.