Hello, I arrived in Peru a while ago but I'm trying to see if there's a way to avoid the fine leaving the country. My passport didn't get stamped. How can they track the day of my arrival? Thanks.
- This commment is unpublished.@Myri Hello Myri,
If you overstayed the allowed time as a tourist, you must (!) pay the overstay fine before leaving the country; in most cases, there is no way around it. Not having an entry stamp and Migraciones, as you hope, not knowing when you entered, won’t exempt you from paying as they most probably know exactly when you came to Peru.
It can have two reasons why your passport wasn’t stamped when you entered Peru. The first is harmless, the other one, regardless of the overstaying, might cause serious inconveniences for you. As you unfortunately only wrote that you “arrived in Peru a while ago”, I don’t know which one applies to you.
During the height of the Corona pandemic, so from October 2020, when Peru resumed air travel, until May 2022, Peruvian immigrations didn’t stamp passports of foreigners entering the country. In June and July of 2022 some passports were stamped others not. But while foreigners who entered the country as a tourist didn’t get a stamp in their passport, their entry and the number of days they were allowed to stay was automatically registered in a Migraciones database. So, if you entered during that time frame, it’s nothing unusual that you don’t have an entry stamp and Migraciones just has to scan your passport and immediately gets the info when you arrived. And even if you came to Peru later, it also can be that an immigration officer just forgot to stamp your passport, but hopefully still correctly registered you when you entered.So, to check if you were correctly registered, you should have a look at your so-called TAM virtual. You can do this on the Migraciones website under Consultas en Linea TAM virtual.In the drop-down list choose your travel document, in most cases this will be the passport (pasaporte) and enter the passport number. Afterwards, select in the drop-down list your nationality; be aware that the names are in Spanish, so you won’t find, for example United States or US, but have to look for EE.UU (Estados Unidos); or no sign of Germany, so select Alemania, etc.
Then just enter the day you entered Peru and the captcha. Click on “Verificar” and you should immediately get your entry in the Migraciones database showing your personal data, the day you came to Peru and the number of days you were given when you entered. That’s part of what the immigration officer will see when he/she scans your passport.
If you get an error message, there might be a problem with your registration which isn’t good.
Anyway, if the Migraciones website doesn’t show your TAM virtual, open the Agencia Digital, the Migraciones online platform, choose “Extranjero” (foreigner), fill in required personal data (passport and number, birthdate, nationality (names are in Spanish), date of entry) and the captcha and then click on “Verificar”. On the next page you find on the left the point "Consultas en linea"; click on it and choose "TAM virtual". Then select "personal" and enter your personal data (passport and number, date of entry and “entrada” as requested. Click on “Siguiente” and the system should show you a page with your personal data, the day you entered, and the time you are allowed to stay.If you get an error message here as well or the screen remains blank, chances are that you not only didn’t get an entry stamp but weren’t registered correctly when you entered. Really not good and this won’t let you off the hook not paying the overstay fine. It causes you more problems.
A few months ago someone entered Peru by bus, when I remember correctly, coming from Ecuador. When this person tried to fly out of Lima airport a couple of weeks after entering, the immigration officer couldn’t find this person in the database and there was no stamp in the passport either (which the person hadn’t noticed). So, this person was denied leaving the country as he could have entered Peru illegally. Even though not his fault, he had to apply for a “Regularización de movimiento migratorio” proving that he crossed the border legally. The whole process took over 4 weeks until he finally was allowed to leave. So, nothing to look forward to, especially if you additionally overstayed (excessively?).
Anyway, I hope that you entered Peru around or before May/June/July 2022, therefore didn’t get an entry stamp but were correctly registered and just have to pay the overstay fine. If you don’t have enough money to pay, ask family or friends to help you out. If this doesn’t work for you, getting in contact with Migraciones is inevitable. Explain your situation and hope that they offer you a feasible solution. Migraciones might offer a payment plan or a reduction or could as well allow you to leave without paying the fine put punishing you with a re-entry ban for anything between 1 and 10 years. Another option could be trying to leave the country using a small border crossing and hopefully being able to bargain down your fine or even slipping through without anyone noticing your overstay.Wishing you all the bestEva