Visa-or-no-Visa? Marlin sent me this: " Hi, I know it's become old news, but since people are still talking about it, I'd say the truth of visas for Americans is a mix of all this: it can be arbitrary, like Nir said, but it's also that the procedures for entering Syria from Lebanon have changed over the last few decades. Sometimes it's been a 3-5 hour wait, sometimes it's been no way, and sometimes it's been automatic (and speedy) if you have residency in Lebanon, but not if you're a tourist. Since I'm a journalist and get in another way (visa sent to the border by the Information Ministry), I don't know what current policy is, but it's always liable to change and people usually ask the latest travelers for an update. The relevant point is how they intended to leave Syria if they convinced the driver to get them into the country illegally. At the border post on your way out, you have to show your entry stamp, so they'd be detained at that point until it got straightened out. The two plausible scenarios to me look like screwed by the driver (one could compile a book of such incidents), or they asked him to take them around border areas and possibly into Syria, then back into Lebanon, meaning no stamp is exactly what you want. You'd think this could be cleared up by whether they bought a one-way ticket or round-trip from Amman-Beirut, or cancelled the round-trip in Lebanon. If they weren't intending to fly back to Lebanon, they certainly would be going through Syria, which would mean an illegal entry is pointless, because you'll have problems at the Jordanian-Syrian border. The sure-fire answer: ask Abed...Now."