On June 6, an Australian vacationer touring to a good friend’s marriage ceremony skilled a journey nightmare: He was denied entry to Indonesia attributable to an unexpected passport concern. The issue was not one among visa standing or expiration date; somewhat, Matt Vandenberg was despatched again from whence he got here due to a small tear on one web page of his passport. 

Vandenberg took to Twitter to share his expertise, which began in Sydney the place his passport was scanned with out incident. A six-hour Jetstar flight to Denpasar, a standard vacation spot airport for vacationers heading to Bali, adopted with no bother to report. When it got here time to obtain his passport stamp and enter Indonesia, nonetheless, an official noticed an roughly 1-centimeter rip (“I had no thought till he bent all of it the best way again, and it stood out,” Vandenberg stated) and informed him that he wouldn’t be allowed to enter the nation. His passport was then confiscated till he might return to Australia 12 hours later.

Despite the many bells and whistles present on modern passports worldwide, passports are nonetheless product of paper and, as such, are vulnerable to wreck. A broken passport, relying on the circumstances, may be as detrimental to your journey plans as an expired one. If the improper immigration official spots the improper factor, as in Vandenberg’s case, your journey could also be toast. The foundations—particularly, what constitutes vital harm—range from nation to nation, which accounts for the distinction in Vandenberg’s therapy in Australia versus Indonesia (house to a few of the strictest passport harm legal guidelines on this planet). The one answer, actually, is to interchange the passport, and there is no particular therapy, both. It doesn’t matter what freak accident you might encounter, anticipate to get according to all people else. 

The US State Division notes harm that can require a substitute as “water harm, a big tear, unofficial markings on the information web page, lacking visa pages (torn out), a gap punch, or different accidents,” whereas additionally flagging that “put on and tear” reminiscent of bending and fanning are to not be frightened about. However the subjectivity of these guidelines (what qualifies as a “vital tear”?) could also be troublesome to parse. To get a greater grasp on passport harm, and what to do about it, we turned to an knowledgeable.

How can a passport maintain harm?

Ilya Buravstov of Generations Visa Service has seen all of it in the case of passport harm. The danger of harm begins simply after a passport’s creation–whereas in transit to its proprietor: Buravstov has seen circumstances of packages falling off the truck and getting trampled in visitors. Injury could also be invisible–extreme publicity to daylight might fry that chip embedded within the cowl, making it un-scannable in a overseas vacation spot. 

Commonest is water harm—new passports getting not noted within the rain in flimsy envelopes, liquid spills, passports supposedly safely saved away ruined by storm floods, the checklist goes on. The State Division permits for bending sustained by a passport being stored in a again pocket, but when these pants nonetheless harbor the doc once they undergo the laundry, your luck’s washed out.