Pre ESTA days, I used to have one of those long-term USA visas. Come to think of it, I suppose its time limit was described as 'indefinite'. So true.
One day I was travelling alone, re-entering the US through somewhere like JFK and was stopped by the border official.
He called to another person who escorted me over into a small side room, like in a Jason Bourne movie. I was asked a few questions by one person whilst another one hovered in the background. They explained they were revoking my visa. Its full page glory was unceremoniously cancelled and I was given a new mini stamp in the passport with a time limit.
In its own small way, this was quite unnerving, yet the actual process was probably only 15 minutes, admittedly at the end of a six hour flight.
Because of my frequent travelling, in those days I used to keep a couple of passports running, one which I called my 'clean' passport and the other one which has a few more stamps in it. Even that process changed as the various authorities started to move over to those whole page stickers with photographs on them. And there was a certain country which I visited that would put their stamps onto paper to be kept with the passport for the duration of the visit (wink wink).
Even now I order the extra pages version of the passport.
But with new border controls being created, I'm wondering about the whole passport thing again. Aside from the shhh! fake camouflage 'passports' which anyone can get (like British Honduras or Western Sahara), there's the places that have lesser rules.
I'm guessing that the US will once again rein in the H-1/H-1B and similar visas, as another part of the buy American thing. I wonder which nationalities possessing such documents will still, like me, get into the country with an replacement alternative stamp?
(Update: I wrote this before it happened, but yes, it's now in the news)
The other part of this is the way that dual nationalities get sold. There's a list of special companies and particular countries that provide -er- services to help people get around. In at least one place you can simple hand over dosh to become a citizen. It's about the same amount as needed to buy a new Bentley, if you know what I mean.
It'd be daft to try to get, say, a U.N. Special Services Diplomatic passport, but there's other jus sanguinis (right of bloodline) countries like Italy or Ireland, where in the right circumstances, it is more about filling in the right forms.
These three are quite useful
Consultancies like that one close to the US Embassy in London are now running free seminars in certain areas like the Middle East, to help guide people through the options. I expect it is still tricky to get a pretty pink Singapore passport (2 years residence) or a Belgian E.U. passport (that's the one the Eurocrats are lining up for). Of course, typing in 'fake passports' to the internet wouldn't work, would it?
Maybe it's time to get a multipass?
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