after I got the failed visa on my chinese passport in China 10 years ago, In order to get record straight, I changed to a brand new Chinese passport to apply for landed immigrant in Canada...and when I got the permanent residence in Canada, when I went to consulate to apply for the visitor visa to US, even on my Chinese passport with a clean record, they can see the bad record back from China from old passport.....Now I am Canadian citizen, so whenever they swiped my Canadian passport through the computer, then I guess my file shows up.....People can always change passport, if they only trace people from passport, then security system is a joke......they search for your name and birth date and other things which i don't know, but definitely not passport you are holding....