A FREQUENT flyer has revealed a huge passport mistake that could get travellers banned from visiting foreign countries.
Christine Retschlag faced the horror of getting deported from Vanuatu after her passport was mistakenly stamped with the wrong details.
Despite handing over a 90-day approved visa letter to the immigration staff at the airport in Port Vila, her passport was stamped with a 30-day visa.
And just like most other people, she never bothered to check the passport stamp after getting cleared by the airport’s immigration.
Writing about her experience on a blog in Travller, Christine said: “I unwittingly became an illegal alien.”
Christine – who was on a business trip to Vanuatu – noticed the mistake on her passport after a conversation about visas and immigration with her colleague prompted her to check her arrival stamp.
After overstaying her visa by 30 days, a frantic Christine started to dig out more information about the visa rules in Vanuatu.
She realised the country’s immigration system only offers two kinds of business visas – and neither of them stated a 30-day stay.
Christine said: “I visited the Vanuatu Immigration website and it clearly stated there are only two types of business visa.
“The first one was a 90-day single entry, which I had applied for and been approved, and a 10-month multiple entry visa.
“How in the South Pacific did this rogue visa appear in my passport?”
A worried Christine took her case to a long-term friend of hers, who said that this was the fourth case that happened in the past year.
Her friend added that the Vanuatu government fines immigration offenders thousands of dollars, gives them 24 hours to leave, and stamps “Deported” on their passports.
“At this point, I started to triple-check the stark stamp on my passport, hoping it would magically reappear,” she wrote in the blog.
Fearing her passport history would get ruined, Christine then contacted a former colleague in Australia who agreed to assist her with the immigration chaos.
Her friend soon arranged for a “fixer” to accompany her to the immigration department.
The helper – who told Christine it would take just a few minutes to fix her illegal status – took her to an immigration officer at the airport.
To her surprise, the visa team admitted it was a mistake on their part – and offered to correct the document by stamping “cancelled” on the incorrect visa while issuing a new one with the correct days.
While Christine was assured by the immigration officer the blunder wouldn’t cause any problem for her during her future travels, the frequent flyer thinks otherwise.
But she says “It is a problem for tomorrow to deal with”.
In the blog, Christine advised other travellers to always check the visa stamps on their passports while arriving in a country – and to always keep a physical copy of the visa letter at all times.
