I would say that is pretty serious violation of human rights, for relatively small infraction. Soviet countries used similar system to prevent people from leaving their communist paradise.
How are you supposed to pay your debt, if you are not allowed to find new job abroad?!
in which direction? headed south or back north?
Going North into america I'd say the majority don't have passports and they are let through anyway. I actually have a legal US passport and I watched myself detained, jailed, and interrogated while everyone without a passport was let through with a birth certificate and state driver's license (this is modern times, not the days when that was all you needed). So maybe it is worse to have a passport as it's suspicious as most people at the lesser land crossings do not.
I don’t think it’s that hyperbolic. But I agree that the existence of debts shouldn’t invalidate one’s right to a passport.
(The counter argument is that passports are a privilege and citizenship a bundle of privileges and duties. Why should the country have the burden of passporting someone abroad who as abandoned it.)
They don’t.
"Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country."
Passports shouldn't be a privilege, and violation of the universal declaration of human rights is pretty serious.
No, it isn’t. It isn’t even legally binding. (And obviously couldn’t be. It would invalidate incarceration and conscription, for example.)
Wouldn’t one applying for a passport involve the government and person connecting on some level?