After our last trip where I had to use both my passports (USA & Australian), I thought that some people may appreciate some tips for how to handle traveling with 2 passports.
Our trip originated in Australia, with transits through Thailand, Korea, Canada & the USA to Belize. Then we visited Guatemala, Costa Rica and Panama before flying back to the USA for 10 days after which we returned to Australia via Korea and Thailand. My husband used his Australian passport with an ESTA to enter the USA. I had to bring both USA & Australian passports with me.
The Australian gov’t requires its citizens to enter and exit Australia using their Australian passports. The USA gov’t has the same requirement. So how do you know which passport to show at different stages of travel?
CHECKING IN AT THE AIRPORT
Airlines may be fined if they transport someone to a country where they don’t have a visa or other permission to enter so they want to be sure you have the correct documents. When we checked in with Thai at Brisbane airport, they wanted to know that we had permission to transit the USA since you can’t do this airside as with most countries. They also wanted to know we could enter Belize, the final destination of the journey. Star Alliance provides a tool to look up this information. Delta used to have one but it seems to have been taken down.
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The resulting screen is too long to copy here but in a nutshell it says that Australians need an ESTA to transit (or visit) the USA which my husband had. We had a printout of it but they could see it on his passport somehow. They also wanted to see my US passport as proof that I could transit the USA enroute to Belize.
Australians may enter Belize for up to a month without a visa. They could see we had return tickets to Australia, albeit from Honolulu but I did have printouts of our Central American airline tickets if they had asked. We actually took a shuttle van from Belize to Tikal in Guatemala.
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EXITING THE ORIGINATING COUNTRY
Simple: if you are a citizen of that country, you use their passport. If you are not a citizen, you can use any valid passport. We both used our Australian passports to exit Australia.
VISITING COUNTRIES ENROUTE WHERE YOU ARE NOT A CITIZEN BUT DON’T REQUIRE A VISA
We could have chosen to exit the airport in Thailand, Korea and Canada. We only exercised this option in Canada to make a quick trip into Vancouver. Since Australians and Americans can enter these countries, I had a choice of passports. I used my Australian passport since my husband was also using his Australian passport for simplicity. In this case, you can use either passport which suits your convenience.
VISITING COUNTRIES WHERE ONE OF YOUR PASSPORTS REQUIRES A VISA AND ONE DOESN’T
I’ll use an example of a friend who has both UK and USA citizenship visiting Brazil. If he flies from London to Miami to Rio de Janiero; he must show his UK passport when exiting the UK, US passport to transit the USA and the UK passport to enter Brazil since citizens of the UK don’t need a visa to enter Brazil for 90 days. If he used his US passport, he would have to obtain a visa in advance for $160! Always check both your passports against a country’s visa requirements and use the one which gets you into the country cheaper!