Henley Passport Index – The number of countries holders can travel to visa-free | Hacker News Reader

Henley Passport Index – The number of countries holders can travel to visa-free

henleyglobal.com

55 pointssohkamyung57 comments

This index is missing bonus points for countries you're allowed to not just visit as a tourist but also live and work in visa-free - i.e. giving a boost to Schengen passports. Are there any other countries with similar agreements? The only one I know of is the Nordic Passport Union which includes some non-EU countries.

Its also convenient that they sell some of those top ranking passports if you have enough cash https://www.maltatoday.com.mt/news/national/71668/henley_als...

Australia and NZ

Some South American countries under Mercosur, which is being slowly replaced by the Union of South American Nations.

Even though Japan and Singapore are tied at 180 a piece, they don't have the same 180.

Japan but not Singapore: India, Ethiopia, Gabon, Sao Tome and Principe, Falkland Islands, Guyana, and Venezuela

Singapore but not Japan: Myanmar, Burkina Faso, Cote d'Ivoire, Gambia, Ghana, Cuba, Brazil

I think you have to give the tie breaker to Japan because India is #2 in the world based on population and #6 based on GDP.

Their competitor's website (which has slightly nicer sorting/filtering functions, imo) is here: https://www.passportindex.org

These rankings are the source of a constant joke between my girlfriend and me.

She, Singaporean, previously proudly pointed me at these lists to support her claim that the SG passport is the world's best. Over the last couple month the numbers shifted around a bit and for a time my German passport was ranked the same and for a while even higher.

Given that I have not a lot of experience with visa issues (due to the passport and limited traveling, mostly around in the Schengen area on top): How expensive/difficult/limiting is it if you need a visa for a lot of locations?

I think the only visa I ever needed was one for India and that was rather painless, straightforward and fast.

It can be somewhat inconvenient to being so debilitating that you need to plan years in advance.

Arab here. Don’t get me started. It’s not much the visa itself than the entire procedure. You have to book an interview in an embassy and the dates are usually fully booked so you would have to skip work or endure other costs. A lot of forms to fill and required documents from a variety of administartions. The worst part is the uncertainty.

Visas are really different per country. In some cases you need an appointment, with an interview. In other cases fill something online and pay a fee. A few are really an entry tax to get extra money off of foreigners so you get it on arrival after you pay the "visa fee".

It's usually not terribly expensive, but difficulty varies between painless and trip-cancelling.

Most countries these days will do it online for a nominal fee, easy as pie.

If you travel around Africa you'll semi-often find yourself sitting in waiting rooms on touchdown for a few hours while nobody can tell you what's going on, but I've never had an actual problem.

The only close shave I've had was Egypt, who required me to hand my passport into the embassy, then proceeded to delay for so long that I didn't have my passport the day before my (Sydney-Europe) flight. They wouldn't even give it back without the visa, insisting that they hand it handled. I was only able to get it after going to the embassy and refusing to leave until I had it in hand. Five hours later.

But I did get the visa.

> Most countries these days will do it online for a nominal fee, easy as pie.

If by "most" you mean "none of the first world ones".

You are lucky.

I hold a Chinese passport, which is one of the worst when it comes to visa restrictions.

The only upside I is I never make any visa mistakes - it’s hard to find out last minute you need a visa, when you need visa to practically anywhere!

Every international trip requires careful planning in advance. What countries I am visiting? What kind if visa should I get? When is the consulate open? Is there still appointments available? This is especially frustrating when visiting border regions - I had to skip the Argentinian side of Iguacu Falls because I will need another visa. This also makes it hard to go on spur of the moment trips.

Each visa application requires two trips to the consulate (one to send in the application and one to pick it up. a few issue them on the spot, but you will need to sit there for a couple of hours for them to print it), and around $100 in fees. The application form is very tedious and need all kind of supporting material. They usually require you to book the airfare and hotel, but are not responsible for any non refundable purchase if the visa is denied. Medical insurance requirement for Schengen Area is the most annoying. My health insurance covers emergency treatment abroad, and credit card insurance covers accidents, but they cannot give me a letter that says the magic word the consulate wants ($50k coverage, no deductible, covers treatment, evacuation and repatriation) so I have to buy commercial insurance that I don’t need (there’s literally tons of businesses selling insurance and letter as a package). You also need to provide pay slip and bank statement, but comparatively they are minor annoyances.

So what kind of visa will you get? It varies by consulate, and there’s little you can do about them. UK issues two-year visa in China, but not in the U.S. (technically they do, they just cost an astronomical sum) Japan issues five year visa for H1B holders in Detroit and San Francisco, but not New York and Washington.

Do you have a question? Good luck finding someone who can help. Visa section typically don’t have phone numbers, so you have to send an email and hope for a reply (if you are lucky they have published their address) or go in and ask.

An often overlooked problem with needing so many visas is your passport run out faster - each visa takes two pages, one for the sticker and another for the stamp. Replacing passport is, of course, annoying and costly.

So yeah, it is miserable. Hopefully this encourages you to travel the world more, knowing how lucky you are with your passports :)

Thank you for the elaborate reply. I do plan to travel more now that I'm based in SG. Ironically it's not entirely unlikely that the next visa I need is one for China.. :)

The worst part is that the visitors visa issued by most of these countries expires after mostly 6 months.

So you wanna visit the UK again with an Indian passport after your last trip in July? Tough luck; go through the whole process again.

Is that common? My tourist visa to Brazil lasts 10 years, which is standard I thought.

> Visa section typically don’t have phone numbers, so you have to send an email and hope for a reply (if you are lucky they have published their address) or go in and ask.

Even when they do it's as good as if they don't. I once needed to check application status for UK tourist visa. The official line was a toll number, it was handled by call center in India, and no, they could not answer my question.

I have an Indian passport I know how you feel. It’s 2018 and just entering a country can be so difficult!

I have a Kenyan Passport. Every country I visit, I need to file a visa.

I can’t imagine the grief of someone from Afghanistan. I think about that and laboriously file the visa and play the waiting game.

>How expensive/difficult/limiting is it if you need a visa for a lot of locations?

That depends. If you go somewhere like Thailand, you fill one-page form, glue your photo and send passport, said form and 40 dollars in envelope to consulate, then pick it up on your way to airport.

If you go somewhere like US or EU - that's kind of humiliating. You pay ridiculous fee, fill long form on terribly designed website, travel to another city for interview and have 33% chance to not get it without any explanation.

For EU you also get to gather ton of bullshit papers from bank, insurance company, hotel, airline and your local employer for single trip.

The EU one is Schengen to be precise. UK and Ireland have a separate visa process and the Schengen visa also gets you into some non-EU countries (e.g. Iceland).

UK visa process is even worse than Schengen.

> How expensive/difficult/limiting is it if you need a visa for a lot of locations?

Overlanders crossing Africa can spend up to 2000€ in visas alone. (And that’s with an EU passport.) Plus, not only is visiting consulate after consulate a hassle, but the visa application and issuing process is slow enough that it can sometimes take a week or two just before you are able to move on from one country to the neighbouring one.

More interesting than the list of individual countries, is which dual citizenship’s give the “best” value. I’m eligible for citizenship of at least 4 countries, typically it’s hard to maintain more than dual citizenship, so if this was the vector I wanted to optimize on, which pair would be best?

See https://www.henleypassportindex.com/improve-passport

Australian by birth and British by descent (much of Australia’s citizenry) works well; visa free travel to many countries, a special work visa category in the US, and the ability to work in th UK and Europe, at least until any brexit.

Although it keeps you out of parliament. And I think the proportion of Australians with dual British citizenship is greatly exaggerated. (My nearest British ancestory is on the other side of Queen Victoria.)

"typically it’s hard to maintain more than dual citizenship"

I am considering taking a 3rd. I am aware of some of the hurdles but out of curiosity, where do you see problems?

I have three (US and two EU countries) and as far as I am aware the biggest hurdle is paying for multiple passport renewals.

Citizenship doesn't go away just because you don't renew your passport.

.. but it does go away if you don't maintain a presence of some variety in the given countries.

No it doesn't. You may lose right of abode but you are unlikely to lose your citizenship.

Simply not true, at least in my case. I haven't been back to my country-of-birth in over 30 years, and have citizenship in the country of my childrens' birth. When the time came to renew my passport, I was informed that my citizenship in my birth country was dependent on whether I had any connection there any more, and since my birth-country has policies regarding dual-citizens needing to justify their citizenship, this was under question. I needed to either go back and live there for a while, or simply give up my citizenship.

Maybe its different in your birth-country and with your citizenship, but its not true that its automatically given and never revoked in every country in the world. Its a case-by-case basis, depending on the policies of the nations involved.

Actually, he is right about the Netherlands. https://ind.nl/en/dutch-citizenship/Pages/Loss-and-the-revok...

That depends on the country. You lose Dutch citizenship if you have dual citizenship and don't live in The Netherlands or renew your passport in 10 years.

Generally they don’t want to give naturalization to people with more than one nationality. But if you are a full right citizen by an other rule, you could end up with more than that.

A small detail has to be noted, wether it has been recognized or not and claimed or not, a lot of rules give citizenship to people. The paperwork is about claiming it officially.

Got source? The vast majority of countries either a) insist you renounce all other citizenships on naturalization, whether it's one or three, or b) don't care how many you have.

You are late to the party, the latest trend is to strip citizenship from naturalized people we don’t like, it’s only possible if they retained one previous citizenship.

Some will allow dual citizenship, but place conditions that make it difficult to get more than one. E.g., German citizenship law allows dual citizenship if:

> If a child born to German parents acquires another citizenship at birth (e.g., based on place of birth [birth in jus-soli countries mostly of the Americas], or descent from one parent [one German parent and one foreign parent]).

In theory somebody could have two or three nationalities under that law (two parents and place of birth) but no more.

You could add a fourth under certain conditions:

Say one parent is German and the other is British, and the child was born in Brazil. If the kid is entitled to Israeli citizenship under the Law of Return, they get to keep all four.

Not quite - the law of return would lead to a renouncing of German citizenship.

Your information is incorrect because of many reasons.

1. EU and associated countries (e.g. Switzerland)? Germany does not care

2. Other countries? Give reasons, get a permit.

3. German dual citizenship law does not make any statements how many citizenship you can have.

4. There are countries that do now allow citizens to renounce, e.g. Iran.

I have three, Australia, Eu and a South American country, biggest problem is having to pay for passport renewals and sometimes fulfilling your obligations I.e voting or census. Get as many passports as you can is my recommendation, never know when you might need to flee your country ;)

If just going by economic strength: US + any EU country. As a bonus, if you are of ethnic Chinese descent, you can look into one of the "greater China" regions of HK/Macau/Taiwan as well, depending on where you/your parents were born.

That combo would give you the ability to live and work freely in the three most important economies in the world (US/EU/CN).

The downside to holding US citizenship is your tax situation quickly gets very messy, requiring expensive specialist tax accountants.

One thing I don't like about this is it looks like they consider countries that require an ETA to be visa free, which I don't agree with. To me that's still basically a visa.

The practical difference between visa free and ETA is much less than between ETA and proper visa. You skip embassy/consulate appointment (often two, often for all your family members in person, often in another city or even country), and you often don't pay anything. Many ETAs are done once and for substantial periods, sometimes until your passport's expiry date.

The UK could soon see its ranking change rather substantially

The UK will not lose visa free or VoA access to the EU due to Brexit.

I can't imagine that this is still a thing in 21st century. We should be able to travel anywhere.

You can see how there are many political battles in the US simply because Russia bought some political ads and other things that are perfectly legal for US citizens to do. Imagine if Russia literally sent several thousand people to states that allow people to vote without IDs.

> sent several thousand people to states that allow people to vote without IDs.

That is strictly not true, I believe. In the US, some form of ID (not necessary a Photo ID) is required to vote [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_ID_laws_in_the_United_St...

according to your link > No ID required to vote at ballot box: California, Illinois, Iowa, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nebraska, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Vermont, West Virginia, Wyoming, and Washington, D.C.

That's the top level view. A deep dig in the "Laws by state" section shows that some form of ID is still needed.

For example:

Maine: No ID needed at polling place if registered to vote at least one day prior to election. However an ID is required to vote if person was registered to vote on the day of the election

Massachusetts: Non-photographic ID is accepted at polling stations.

Minnesota: Non-photographic ID is accepted at polling stations.

Some of those states are also getting legislation requiring ID for voting.

Maine's law is pretty weak. All one has to do is register more than a day before the election and then they don't need an ID. I don't know how easy it is to register in Maine, but California is laughably easy. Just check the boxes saying that you don't have an ID, SSN, address or phone number, and then you can register with very little information.

That doesn't make any sense, e.g. having a Japanese passport doesn't let you vote in 180 countries you can visit.

Correct, but if Japanese people typically committed crime when in the US, then the US would want to limit the amount of them that enter and evaluate those people before coming.

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