Use the complete relevant record for review, including status and admission information and reliable travel evidence. Do not assume a single source resolves every date or category.
Reconcile gaps instead of estimating silently
Identify uncertain dates and missing records. Separate time abroad, principal work status and dependent status clearly. A calculation is only as reliable as the facts and legal treatment supporting it.
Treat the stamps as one input among several and reconcile them against the others before relying on any of them. Entries are not always stamped, ink can be illegible, and a stamp records an admission without recording the day of departure, so a chronology built on stamps alone will contain gaps that look like presence and presence that looks like absence. Assemble the electronic admission history, the person’s own travel records and any employer record of where the work was performed, then set the three side by side and mark every disagreement.
Those disagreements are the real product of the exercise: a reconciled chronology with three sources agreeing is worth more than a longer one from a single source. Where a conflict cannot be resolved, set out both readings and the consequence of each, instead of quietly adopting the one that helps. Date the reconciliation itself and note which sources were available on that date.
A record received later can change the picture, and an undated analysis gives no way of telling whether it did.