To the editorial office TourDom.ru a subscriber contacted, who told about the delicate situation in which one of the tourists found herself. She will soon have to travel abroad, and there is no certainty that she will be released with a valid passport. The fact is that one page of the passport that she was recently issued is slightly torn. “The tourist has just received a new passport. A piece of the page is bitten off, missing. Require a replacement passport? How will the border guards, how will the consulates look if they leave with this?” – the subscriber is interested.
In the comments on the telegram channel “Roof of the Tourist House”, he was promptly answered: they say, all this depends on the mood of a particular border guard and it is not worth risking – it is better to change: “One will release, the other will not, and everyone will be right, it is better to replace immediately.”
Lawyers expressed a similar opinion, and the fact that the damage to the passport is insignificant and is located in a place where there is no text does not affect the situation. “Violation of the integrity of the pages is the basis for invalidation of the passport, according to the decree of the Government of the Russian Federation No. 2090 dated 09.12.2023 (it entered into force on December 11 last year. – Ed.). In practice, for example, they release torn pages, but formally this is the basis,” commented lawyer Igor Kositsyn.
The regulatory act to which he referred, among other things, lists the reasons why the passport can be withdrawn. Interestingly, in the text of the resolution, when listing the signs of unsuitability of the passport, there is not a word that a torn page may be the reason for the seizure (if the damage does not affect the information in the document and its protection), therefore, the solution of this issue falls on the shoulders of a specific border guard. In any case, it is better for a tourist not to take risks and change the document.
By the way, before the adoption of Resolution No. 2090 last year, foreign passports were treated much more loyally. It was possible to drive with typos, not to mention minor damage. Now such options are practically excluded.
This year, cases of seizure of passports due to errors found in them have become quite common. The Ministry of Internal Affairs, in order to avoid difficulties with border guards, recommends carefully checking the data when receiving documents, and if errors are detected in the document, immediately apply for their elimination.
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