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Rebuilding your trips from passport stamps, and what to do when there are none

Passport stamps are the record most N-400 applicants already have in hand. They are also getting rarer: Europe stopped stamping most visitors in April 2026, and U.S. officers have reportedly stopped routine admission stamps too.

Facts checked against the sources below on October 14, 2026. A drafting guide, not legal advice; not affiliated with USCIS or CBP.

Why stamps still matter

The N-400 instructions name “your passport showing entry and exit stamps” among the documents that support your residence. For trips in the last five years, your current and expired passports are usually the single best source of exact dates you already own.

Reading stamps into trips

  • Gather every passport that covers the period, including expired ones.
  • Read both sides of a trip. A U.S. trip is the date you left and the date you returned. Foreign entry and exit stamps help bracket those dates when a U.S. stamp is missing.
  • Mind date formats. Many countries stamp day-month-year; 03/04 can be March 4 or April 3.
  • Pair them up. Every exit needs a return, and trips cannot overlap. An unpaired stamp usually means a trip with an unstamped leg.

When there is no stamp

Land crossings

Drives into Canada and Mexico often leave no stamp, and CBP says its I-94 history misses “most land border arrivals and departures.” They still go on the form: ILRC tells preparers to “include trips to Mexico/Canada even if crossed at land border.” Toll records, card statements and photos are the usual way to date them.

Europe since April 2026

The EU’s Entry/Exit System has been “fully operational since 10 April 2026” and replaces passport stamping across most of Europe for non-EU nationals on short stays. If you visited the Schengen area after that on a non-EU passport, you will generally find no Schengen stamp for the trip. Your airline and booking records become the evidence.

U.S. admission stamps

In October 2026, immigration firms reported a CBP bulletin ending routine admission stamps at primary inspection, with stamps kept for secondary inspection and limited cases. We have not been able to confirm the bulletin on cbp.gov, and the reports do not say how it applies to permanent residents. Either way, if a recent trip has no U.S. stamp, that is not unusual, and your CBP FOIA record is the official source for it.

From stamps to the form

TripRebuild reads photos of your stamp pages with an AI model, turns them into dated entries and exits, pairs them into trips and shows each date next to a crop of the stamp it came from, with a confidence score. Readings can be wrong, so every row stays unconfirmed until you check it. Photos are read once and discarded; they are never stored.

For the trips stamps cannot cover, see every other place your travel dates may be recorded.

Sources