2023 Global Passport Ranking
henleyglobal.com
henleyglobal.com
Practically, it means they enjoy easy access to Europe, North America, as well as Asia with little trouble.
In my view Japan at least is undoubtedly a western nation, at least when it comes to the strength and values of their institutions.
2. Expats who only speak English and not the local language are the one who have no trouble getting a visa anyway. To take the example of France, the countries from where people want to migrate (and can't even come with a tourist visa) are mostly African French speaking countries.
cf Zweig, The World of Yesterday for the memoirs of someone who remembered a world without.
* iow, the start of the "short 20th century"
Even regular criminals manage to produce good enough documents to travel with, and those guys don't have access to Heidelberg printing presses.
But there's no need to bother, you won't get busted at an airport because the chip of your passport failed. If they were suspicious, they'd just go through a document verification checklist and see if your passport has the correct physical features. Check out the PRADO glossary for example https://www.consilium.europa.eu/prado/en/prado-glossary/prad...
A bunch of EU countries still issue non-biometric passports, even if with limited validity periods.
I had a coworker from India who was a naturalized citizen for 5-10 years and he was trying to get travel visas for his parents to visit. He had applied many times and been denied each time. We talked about it and he said that the reason given was that the state department considered his parents a risk to not leave at the end of their visit. Comically, when I complained about how that was wrong and his parents would obviously go back he said “100% they will stay, I don’t really blame the visa people. My in laws stayed on a travel visa years ago and are still here.”
There’s also a reciprocity issue that’s sort of chicken and egg. India didn’t grant visas easily back in 2005 because the US didn’t grant their citizens visas.
People are talking about the "risk that they stay" like it's something bad to have too many immigrants. And it ended up like some common sense idea. But what if it's not?
Did California or New York suffer from getting people moving from all the "country side" state? Did the US suffer from their immigration waves when they had open borders, and all you needed to get in was a medical exam on Ellis Island?
The question is whether it’s worth it for the obvious benefit to immigrants. So it may be a net benefit when factoring the improvements to people who immigrate in.
The US benefited greatly from open immigration 100+ years ago because they weren’t that great and there wasn’t much to lose. So it’s apples to oranges of open immigration then to open immigration now. Back then there were no government services and land was literally given out for free.
[0] https://www.investopedia.com/financial-edge/0809/3-ways-immi...
Can you name an example?
Sure, in a country with unused land, untapped resources, and infrastructure that can easily adapt, it could (potentially) result in growth and prosperity for all. But much of overcrowded Europe doesn't meet the prerequisites.
Enrolling migrants in the welfare system is a choice. It's easy to restrict the welfare system to citizens only.
Social order is a bit too nebulous to make a comment.
Country level this mightn't change much initially, as the existing workforce moves where they maintain their income. But on a local level it's disruptive, and if not held in check flows up to country-level. (A "brain-drain".)
Labour compensation is mostly decided by labour productivity. Many software engineers are so in love with their craft, that they would work for free. Instead, they are handsomely rewarded, because (in the limit) competitions bids up their wages to their level of productivity.
(Conversely, just because I am used to a high standard of living, doesn't mean that I will automatically gain high pay.)
Does your theory about newcomers pushing people out of the existing workforce also apply to the situation in the 20th century in the US when women started having careers outside the home? Why or why not?
The situations in the US, especially historically, are very different to those in other parts of the world, especially now.
Yet, even in the US, I see even illegal immigrants right now are being given all manner of bonuses and incentives - free mobile phones, for a recently well-publicised example.
In the UK and Europe immigrants are given free housing and other often monetary benefits not available to ordinary citizens. This, plus their willingness to live in, for example, roach-infested council housing for free or cheap (in the UK), gives them a huge edge in the job market that slowly decimates an area.
There have been very hard times for businesses recently, what do you think they will do when a person turns up offering to do the same job for much less?
Not in my area of work, but in terms of more fundamental employment. All the local faces you see begin changing to those of immigrants, and the entire dynamic and general safety of the small village you once called home shift into something completely alien. Generally, crime goes up, higher-end businesses and talent leave, and the place becomes a ghetto compared to what it was before.
It's not about immigration per se, it's just about the amount of it.
It's accelerated all over Europe recently. It's even headlining the news regularly here as "the migration crisis".
It's not a controversial or unusual thing to think that migrants are causing problems. Historically they're one constant thing that has in Europe.
It's also not at all theoretical - outside perhaps of the safe bubble of comfort those in less volatile situations end up thinking is a universal reality manufacturable by their ideologies.
It's a reality sure, but it's not universal. And not all ideologies work everywhere and when applied to all people.
For example, small UK villages presently having emotion-filled community meetings unable to cope with the negative effect of sudden influxes of 1000's of allotted refugees radically changing every aspect of their home.
But why require evidence, when the basic math has it:
You have x number of people with y number of resources. What will happen if you increase x without also increasing y?
> You have x number of people with y number of resources. What will happen if you increase x without also increasing y?
Places with lots of people tend to be richer. Compare eg New York to Appalachia.
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economies_of_agglomeration
The actual question that is being debated is allowing free movement into this country while at the same time providing full benefits (welfare, housing, health, etc) without requiring job/work permit/etc.
2. Because it would lead to further concentration and centralization of power and money and influence and insanely expensive real estate in the hands of even fewer.
3. Because it is nice to live in a community of people that speak the same language, have a shared culture, and can interact according to some shared norms. I understand this is already lost in Western urban centers, so cultural homogeneity not valued anymore. But those who have it, value it.
I don't want to accuse anyone of lying to you on the internet ... but as I've had no problem interacting according to shared norms (with varied languages and varied cultures) in many* Western urban centers, I will suggest you may wish to reconsider the veracity of your sources.
* eg. Amsterdam Barcelona Boston Edinburgh Hamburg London Los Angeles Milan New York Paris Salzburg Seattle Vancouver
I would prefer Bangladesh to Toronto anytime (and yes I have actually travelled extensively in Bangladesh, and I am NOT ethnically Bengali) just because of the cultural homogeneity. There is no place on Earth I hate more than Dubai because of the cultural potpourri. Maybe it’s just me, but I strongly prefer cultural homogeneity over everything else, even risking my life in a warzone right now (Kyiv) because I love being part of a well-defined centuries-old cultural heritage.
* in my head-canon, the "swarthy moldovan" of Смуглянка fame is not necessarily an ethnic moldovan, but possibly a vineyard worker from the Moldavanka slum (as it was then) of Odesa.
Also, not all cultures align. Hundreds of millions of people are very much against some of the values that you may hold dear. If enough of them become your neighbors, you may be forced to align to their values.
[1] https://www.passportindex.org/byRank.php
[2] https://www.henleyglobal.com/passport-index/ranking
[3] https://www.globalcitizensolutions.com/passport-index/global...
Sadly they don't have a downloadable form of the data. There is however an internal API that returns nice JSON, it looks like they built in provision for maps and coordinate, but never populated that data.
For example, if you could hold two arbitrary passports at the same time, which two would give access to most countries (feels like a kind of graph covering problem to calculate).
But I imagine a lot of tourists from rich countries would enjoy visa free travel to Nepal, and reciprocal rights is a thing.
Maybe that's what explains it? Nepal doesn't grant visa free travel to many countries so not many grant it in return?
Visa free travel to Vanuatu, South Sudan, and North Korea != New Zealand, Botswana, and South Korea
Edit: Also how was this constructed? The "factsheet" download link requires giving them your personal details.
The UK is above Belgium because, according to their data, a British passport allows visa free access to 187 destinations, while a Belgian passport only allows access to 186 destinations.
There's also a full methodology page at https://www.henleyglobal.com/passport-index/about
Please.
Kazakhstan being one example of a country that is so unknown to the west it was used for comedy.
There's also a lot of "ties" in that top 50 too, 49 is not an enviable position.
There are actually 90 countries that are stronger.
[Edit: no, it's actually very reasonable, on a par with Moldova and Georgia. Cyprus —which advertises in Cyrillic— is in the top 20]
Try to travel with russian passport in any civilized country.
Japan and Singapore win it every year because apart from being able to enter all the "usual" Western countries and tourist destinations, they are allowed 14-day visa-free entry to China and some other places that typically require visas from everyone else. But then, for China (at least pre-COVID), many other nationals are allowed 5-day visa-free stay while "transiting." And US citizens can get multiple-entry 10-year visas. So the difference in practice isn't that big.
Visitor visas in general are hardly difficult to obtain. For example Germany is a notch above other EU member states because it has visa-free entry to Namibia (perhaps in reciprocity for the generous German aid directed there), whereas for passport holders from most other countries it's a question of paying a nominal fee ("tourist tax"). Although the amount itself is steep (€90 last I checked), obtaining a visa there is unlikely to prove an obstacle.
It would be more interesting to see a ranking comparing access to the best job markets instead. But then the winners would obviously be EU/EEA member state and US passports, alongside some others that grant a pathway to one of those (Canada, Australia, ...).
Yet another way of looking at it is that the "best" passport is the one that grants the best consular protection for their holders abroad, and here the winners would either be the US (willing and capable of doing more than any other country to get their citizens out of trouble) or some countries that are nominally neutral and non-threatening to anyone (so that holding their passport does not paint you as a target in adversary countries), while still being able to flex their diplomatic muscle if need be (Switzerland? Sweden? The latter used to have the most embassies in the world I think.).
Finally, some passports have anti-features. For example the US citizenship is great if living in the US but can be a burden while abroad due to the need to file taxes even if non-resident, and the FATCA regulations making it difficult to even open a bank account in another country (extra reporting burden on the bank). Singapore is not even a democracy and has mandatory conscription for citizens by birth (perhaps not a gift you'd want to make to your children).
I would like to see a ranking considering all of the above as well but I doubt that's going to happen (unless I made one myself I guess): since the simplistic approach is enough to win the news cycle, why would anyone bother. It's similar to all those city rankings always topped by the most boring places that nominally check all the right boxes but few people aspire to move to.