I wonder about British/Irish people.
Passports for EU citizens aren't stamped anywhere in the EU. I live in Denmark. Would the USA know if I flew to the UK, then the USA?
(I don't intend to do this.)
Passports for EU citizens aren't stamped anywhere in the EU. I live in Denmark. Would the USA know if I flew to the UK, then the USA?
(I don't intend to do this.)
In the end, it's not like a terrorism threat where the ones trying hardest are the ones you need to catch. Here, keeping 99% out can suffice easily, esp if the others are also questioned and are getting temperature checks.
This kind of question is a weird one to me. It's like "oh, marijuana prohibition hasn't worked so we should tax it and regulated it".
If you're breaking the law, there's sanctions. You may or may not get caught, and you may or may not be penalised, but that imperfection doesn't decide if it's valid or not. The jails in every country have murderers in them, but murder has been illegal since time immemorial. No-one proposes that we allow murder because with the prohibition we simply wind up with people in prison.
And there's a big difference between free movement of people versus a limited funnel of people. If it's still early enough, that could make the difference between something that is containable and something that is not, and it might make the difference between ICUs that can cope with the peak and being completely overwhelmed. (However, I think the horse has already bolted on this one.)
what would work in that case is take the Channel Tunnel to England, then lie about how long you've stayed in the UK. It probably wouldn't work if you have taken a flight out/in the EU in the past months as that would show up to any customs official.
I wouldn't be surprised if some people in Europe are making similar "escape plans" via the UK, if they feel they need to be in the USA for some reason.
As an example: a parent of an international student, whose university in the USA has just been shut down.
I would imagine they will have you fill in a recent travel form. And make it clear that you'll be in a lot of trouble if you don't answer truthfully.
The document is checked, but it is not stamped. GB/IE←→Schengen checks used to be very simple — often just a glance, no checking the chip or swiping the passport in a reader. Often it was just one or two customs people standing by the gate and looking at each document, not even with a desk. Now (since the refugee thing?) they do swipe the document on the passport-reader-machine.
I assume an electronic record is kept (at least for some period of time), and it is surely shared within the EU+GB, but I don't know if it would be shared to the USA.
(If the situation were reversed, would the USA tell the EU about American citizens who've crossed the US/Canada border using their driving license?)