I was going to write a long post to tell you all about how they checked my documents at the border and what those documents were and how I filled them all out.
But they didn’t check anything at the border.
At the gate in DFW, I looked at a camera that recognized my face and matched it to my passport and showed a big green check mark and then I could board the plane.
After landing in Roma, at Passport Control I scanned my passport on a machine and looked at another camera that presumably recognized my face again. And then an agent stamped my passport without even looking at it. And that was all.
Now, maybe everything was connected together and synced up on the back end. Before checking in for my flight, I had used the American Airlines app and the Verifly app to upload my passenger locator form and proof of vaccination. Maybe AA checked the forms on behalf of the Italian government, and connected that info to my passport. Maybe when the cameras recognized my face they also followed the trail of digital links across these apps to verify all my evidence that I’m allowed to safely visit Italy without quarantine. Maybe the Italian Ministry of Health, Ministry of the Interior, Border Police, US Department of State, and American Airlines, are all working together in perfect harmony to make traveling in these times both safer and easier than ever before. Maybe.
Anyway once someone actually checks my CDC card I’ll talk about that.