Airborne_Again wrote:
Do you mean illegal for citizens of that country or for any traveller? (Do you have examples of such countries?)
Both. Each country has different rules for both situations.
skydriller wrote:
Both. Each country has different rules for both situations.
Do you have an example of a country where it is illegal for a foreign traveller to carry two passports?
Saudi Arabia
There re loads of countries which don’t like you having a different (or a specific – Israel and the Middle East is a famous example) passport, but I don’t expect there will be any which care if you were physically searched and they found you carrying 2+ passports belonging to other countries unless there was something else going on (resulting in the physical search).
Regarding the funny numbers in the passport stamps, I am sure they either auto increment or are periodically changed, but unless they are entered into some database, they won’t do anything useful. The stamps are made with simple manual devices, not with anything tied to a “computer”.
How do peripatetic immigration and customs inspectors manage, I wonder? A series of little inky holsters on their belts?
What happened to innocent until proven guilty? Is it really the traveller’s obligation to prove that he did comply with immigration rules? I can only guess that this can only be because immigration rules are rules applying to foreigners and not law applying to citizens.
I think a country can choose to treat foreigners at the border any way it chooses.
Anyway, it will be interesting if anybody notices that backwards stamp in my passport. I will report here if anything happens 
Between Andorra and Spain, no checks were being made in both directions (they are random) so you could easily get mismatched stamps; probably even more likely if you entered from say Spain and left via France.
I had a funny experience on a trip just now.
I truthfully said Croatia. He said OK and drove the whole bus (a mixture of countries) straight to the show. I wasn’t complaining… But then on departure the police had difficulty counting the stamps They thought I had arrived from England, so I told them I came from Croatia. I think the whole lot down there thinks Croatia is in Schengen! Eventually they (2 of them) gave up trying to work it out and asked if Croatia stamped me IN and OUT; I said Yes (well both stamps were in the passport for them to see). So they sent me on without stamping anything So basically the stamp count business doesn’t work.
But in any case you could tell the airport police you are flying to Germany, while filing a flight plan to Kathmandu.
Even if the authorities want to make us responsible for obtaining the stamp upon arrival, sometimes it’s outright impossible. I remember arriving from outside Schengen to a big cargo hub with virtually no passenger traffic. The passport control hall was empty and locked. I asked at the briefing room if there was any procedure to follow… They just shrugged it off.
Peter wrote:
I think the whole lot down there thinks Croatia is in Schengen! Eventually they (2 of them) gave up trying to work it out and asked if Croatia stamped me IN and OUT; I said Yes (well both stamps were in the passport for them to see). So they sent me on without stamping anything
In that case the stamp counting did work! At least as far as Croatia is concerned. But I agree, the whole stamping business doesn’t make sense. It is probably only there to simulate some kind of control. A little bit like a signature, it proves nothing and can easily be forged but gives people the impression that something important just happens. And of course the further south you go the more stamping and checking happens. For Croatia the number plate of the car is sufficient, Turkey, they are happy with an ID card but will stamp the passport if you hand it over and in Egypt they really want to stamp something and give you a card which gets stamped when you only show an ID card. For every country there are as many rules as there are other countries but in general with a mainland Europe passport there will be no stamping within most of Europe, Schengen or not. But Britain is (and always has been) a little bit different.
