Dokument #1171242
IRB – Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada (Autor)
According to the consular secretary at the
Consulate of Guatemala in Ottawa, Mexicans and foreigners from most
other countries need a visitors' visa or a tourist card to enter
Guatemala legally, whether travelling by air or on land (1 Sept.
1993). Tourist cards are valid for a limited period and allow free
entrance and exit (although travellers are always subject to
customs and border control procedures) (Ibid.). Tourist cards are
sold in Guatemalan consulates and embassies (Ibid.).
According to the source, all passports,
whether Guatemalan or foreign, should be stamped with an ink seal
every time the passport holder enters or leaves Guatemala (Ibid.).
Persons holding tourist cards may have both their cards and their
passports stamped (Ibid.). The source suggested contacting the
General Directorate of Migration in Guatemala for possible
corrections to and corroboration of the above and for additional
details. According to a staff member responsible for answering
public enquiries at the Departamento de Informaciones,
Dirección General de Migración (Department of
Information, General Directorate of Migration), every person must
have his or her passport stamped when entering or leaving the
country, whether the passport is Guatemalan or foreign (1 Sept.
1993). Both the entry seal and the exit seal include the date of
stamping and are similar, except for the fact that one clearly
reads "entrance" and the other reads "exit" in Spanish (Ibid.). As
per the specific questions received with your request, the staff
member stated that it is conceivable that at some border controls
an exit or entry stamp may have been lost, misplaced or broken, in
which case the passport may not have been stamped with the right
seal or may have not been stamped at all, and the border control's
observations may have been handwritten (Ibid.). The source also
stated that entry or exit seals on a passport may have been forged
or tampered with on purpose and that, in any case, "everything is
possible" regarding travel documentation, particularly when
considering that clandestine or illegal border crossings occur
(Ibid.).
The staff member explained that the tourist
card is equivalent to a tourist visa (Ibid.). It is valid for a
six-month period and is available only to citizens of the United
States, Mexico and Great Britain (Ibid.). When the card holder
enters and leaves the country, the card must be stamped with the
same seals used for passports (Ibid.). The person holding a tourist
card does not need to present a passport to enter Guatemala, but if
a passport is presented, both the card and the passport must be
stamped (Ibid.). Many visitors prefer to present both documents
because the tourist card alone does not allow the visitor to obtain
a driving permit or to request any migration-related procedure such
as extending a visa or obtaining a temporary work or residence
permit (Ibid.). If a passport and a tourist card are presented at
the border control, the passport will likely have the tourist card
number, preceded by the initials TT (from Tarjeta de Turista in
Spanish), written by hand above or near the entry seal (Ibid.).
Additional and/or corroborating information
could not be found among the sources currently available to the
DIRB.
Consulate of Guatemala, Ottawa. 1
September 1993. Telephone interview with consular secretary.
Department of Information, General
Directorate of Migration, Guatemala City. 1 September 1993.
Telephone interview with staff member.