For the full context, it looks like Henley & Partners is providing services like obtaining second citizenship, so it's in their best interest to highlight the US passport "decline". Further down they say "Americans Lead Global Rush for Second Citizenships", which just happens to be the thing they are selling.
I wish there was an index where not all countries are weighted equally, but according to their desirability. Multiply each country by some factor which is defined by how many people would list it as their desirable destination. The index where France and Tuvalu are both counted equally makes no sense to me, with all due respect to the latter.
I mean, a major reason the US fell in the ranks is because Brazil has stopped giving the US, Canada, and Australia visa-free access, Vietnam didn't include the US in the list of countries it chose to extend visa-free access to, Venezuela has extended visa-free access to a number of EU and EFTA members, and Papua New Guinea extended visa-free access to a number of nations recently. Also, the UK has begun enforcing the Electronic Travel Authorisation (ETA) on all countries excluding Ireland, which means the UK is no longer visa free.
The UK's ranking fell for similar reasons as well.
If not having visa-free access to PNG or Venezuela is a metric, it's not a fairly relevant metric, or at least a very lossy metric.
Why should Americans, Canadians, or Europeans get visa free access to China, Brazil, or Vietnam when Chinese, Brazilian, and Vietnamese nationals need to get visas to visit America, Canada, or Europe?
Didn't realize Brazil has Schengen access! That's wild (in a good way)!
Out of curiosity, why don't we see the same degree of Brazilian immigration to the EU then versus the US?
Is it solely economic (ie. a Brazilian accountant is more likely to demand a salary significantly higher that that back in Brazil by moving to the US versus an EU state)?
> Out of curiosity, why don't we see the same degree of Brazilian immigration to the EU then versus the US?
There are a lot of Brazilians in the EU, most have legal residency through heritage (Spanish, Portuguese, Italian are quite common 2nd passports) or through work visas.
You can't discount the huge influence the USA has over Latin America, and specially over Brazil, people look up to the USA as a benchmark/role model, many Brazilians dream of "making it" by moving to the USA; Brazilians also suffer a huge influence from the consumerist aspect of the USA, they want to have nice cars (which are cheaper relative to salaries than in Brazil), they want to buy electronics that are expensive in Brazil: consoles, computers, phones, they want to buy clothing that is considered expensive in Brazil, there's a quite markedly status-chasing aspect of Brazilian society that mimics the American one. Brazil was somewhat molded according to the USA: car-dependent, consumerist, etc. so a lot of Brazilians believe that the USA is what Brazil "could be" if it was richer.
There are many support groups from past immigrants to help out settling in the USA, it's also much easier to live in the USA undocumented than in most of the EU: in the USA there's no centralised identification at the federal level, in the EU most countries require you to have a tax ID to do most of the basic bureaucracies you need to settle.
It's a confluence of factors that make Brazilian immigration into the USA very different than into the EU. From my experience most Brazilians in the EU are high-skilled immigrants or have a second citizenship or are spouses of natives/citizens.
Ever since 9/11 it's been harder for non-whites. That was long before any of this. I won't even bother now. It's not worth my freedom.
I was harassed and detained every single time I went back. Always something different, never anything to actually do with who I actually am or anything I actually did or didn't do.
Do you have any data to back this claim up or are you just stating your opinion?
I was routinely detained at passport control because there was a bad guy with my same name. It took some amount of time and being very polite to get me out of that.
I know a guy who shares a name with a one legged IRA bomber. One would think there would be some effort disambiguate name collisions.
In this case a three year old could probably do it. Let’s see. One, two. Not the guy!!!
It's been harder for people of middle eastern descent but that's about it. I'm nonwhite and have flown a lot and never had any issues. My friend is arab, hipster girl born in LA, and she always gets selected for screening.
Whats the most common reason they’ve harnessed you over? Just wondering if they’re going based on prior issue on file? I’m of Indian descent , born and raised in the U.S - I must be the lucky one. Because I’ve never had any issues. Entering back in the country has been trouble free so far.
Have you thought about signing up for global entry. Recently signed up for it myself and now I just skip talking to a human (and waiting in line)
Ok, so.. I don't know how to say this without sounding insensitive, but I'm a pretty traditional looking (albeit perhaps short) British, blue-eyed, white guy.
I have seriously never had a positive interaction with the US border force. Wether it's the TSA or another associated organisation (since I've been pestered by people who are not TSA).
I've been detained, questioned, randomly selected, given contradictory rules by different people, had things randomly confiscated and even been insulted.
I'm not confrontational, and I don't believe I stand out.
I have had exactly ONE positive interaction (in 2011) whereby I had accidentally travelled with a pocket knife in my checked luggage and due to the fact I was not allowed to check my luggage on the return journey (due to the train being delayed going into Newark; seriously, I understand why Americans distrust public transport) - I told the TSA agent about it and he was kind regarding it, offering condolences, but obviously destroying the knife.
I'm not sure if I'm on some kind of easing program to disincentivise me in particular from visiting the US, but I could easily see that if I was anything other than what I am in terms of race/religion/looks/citizenship: that I would presume that this was the reason.
And, for context, I've been to the US on average twice per year in the last 15 years, so this is my experience from around 30 trips, and 60-ish interactions with the international air apparatus.
It's a pretty decent country once I'm in though, though I wouldn't want to live there.
EDIT: I'm not sure why the parent is being downvoted, his anecdote is the same as mine.
Both things can be true; that it's on average a shitty experience, and that it's on average an even shittier experience for folks of certain demographics.
You can't imagine a shittier outcome for bringing a banned weapon into an airport than "I told the TSA agent about it and he was kind regarding it, offering condolences"?
That was my one positive interaction, and yes it could have gone a lot worse, as mentioned. 1/60 is not exactly batting a thousand.
Every other interaction, I can't imagine being worse. Rude, tense, confusing, authoritarian with arbitrary detainment - with no acknowledgement of time or empathy for your own obligations (to board the plane for example); and heaven help you if you express your frustration.
"Yet in these suits, innocent women — including minor girls — who were not found with any contraband say CBP officers subjected them to harsh interrogation that led to indignities that included unreasonable strip searches while menstruating to prohibited genital probing. Some women were also handcuffed and transported to hospitals where, against their will, they underwent pelvic exams, X-rays and in one case, drugging via IV, according to suits. Invasive medical procedures require a detainee’s consent or a warrant. In two cases, women were billed for procedures."
> Every other interaction, I can't imagine being worse.
Oh, I can help you with that!
> Arar was detained during a layover at John F. Kennedy International Airport in September 2002 on his way home to Canada from a family vacation in Tunis.[1] He was held without charges in solitary confinement in the United States for nearly two weeks, questioned, and denied meaningful access to a lawyer.[1][2] The US government suspected him of being a member of Al Qaeda and deported him, not to Canada, his current home and the passport on which he was travelling, but to Syria.[3][4] He was detained in Syria for almost a year, during which time he was tortured by Syrian authorities, according to the findings of a commission of inquiry ordered by the Canadian government, until his release to Canada. The Syrian government later stated that Arar was "completely innocent."[5][6] A Canadian commission publicly cleared Arar of any links to terrorism, and the government of Canada later settled out of court with Arar. He received C$10.5 million and Prime Minister Stephen Harper formally apologized to Arar for Canada's role in his "terrible ordeal."[7][8] Arar's story is frequently referred to as "extraordinary rendition" but the US government insisted it was a case of deportation.[14]
> I have seriously never had a positive interaction with the US border force. Wether it's the TSA or another associated organisation (since I've been pestered by people who are not TSA)
The trick is to pay to not interact. Global Entry, TSA PreCheck with Digital ID, et cetera.
And for the record, I'm dark-eyed and brown skinned. There are absolutely racists in the Trump administration. But they don't seem to have co-opted this element yet. Instead, it just presents the classic American preference for wealth.
(Note: I'm not endorsing the system. TSA PreCheck makes sense; the fee for it does not. Same for Global Entry.)
These days at many airports, precheck has the same procedures as normal screening. You keep your shoes on, laptops and liquids stay in the bag, and you don't show a boarding pass. And the lines are the same length.
Global entry is a real difference, but you need to travel internationally quite a bit to make the application/renewal process worth it (conditional approval backlog is 12-24 months now, although it seems you skip to the front just in time to do interview-on-arrival on your next trip).
> you meant to write unequal treatment for the wealthy right?
Yes. I'm not endorsing the system. Just stating why folks on HN might be having wildly different experiences.
Broadly speaking, if you have to interact with border control or airport security, you're going to have a bad time. The stupid, lazy and mean are overrepresented in their ranks. You may have a slightly-worse time with particularly physical affects. But I've absolutely watched my British-accented white friend from Atlanta get singled out every time for fuckery by their TSA.
If, on the other hand, you get the unequal wealth treatment, you won't see a disparity. Because there isn't one. You're rarely interacting with a human being.
I know it's normal to criticize the US now being like that, but the reality is, this is a shared vision among the 5-Eyes countries if you dig deeper. It just happens that the US is very outspoken about it. In Canada, for example as I read a couple weeks ago, individuals "having some sort of geopolitical proximity to a concern of Canada" are being put under the microscope and seen as guilty until proven otherwise, primarily from the Middle East (or West Asia if you don't like that terminology), despite the fact that there was no 9/11 or similar event to trigger any reaction, and how’s that a “proximity concern” to Canada.
I look stereotypical MENA and haven't faced any extra screening, and I travel a lot for work both domestically and abroad, and I'm too lazy to get Global Entry or TSA Pre so I'm dealing with general TSA.
Did your friend maybe travel to an Arab country at some point in time that either faced significant instability, a country that borders Syria+Iraq, or to the West Bank via Jordan?
I disagree the paperwork is ridiculous. I don't mind racism I'm white and blue eyed like whatever. But now I have to jump through hoops to visit America?
Pass.
I'm an American living outside the US. While this is true it feels a bit like how pedestrians have the right-of-way at road crossings: you're legally protected, but is right now the time to test how much people are going to respect that?
I crossed the US-Canada land border with a non-US friend to go to a birthday party a while back; they sent us to secondary so my friend could get their passport stamped (their previous visa had run out). CBP took the opportunity to search our car and tried to convince us they found weed before letting us go (neither of us use it).
Another time my wife and I (both citizens) were crossing and the border agent gave us a hard time for having different last names.
I can't imagine what it's like for people with less privilege than I, but I'm already to the point where I stress about crossing the border. I bring a spare phone, wiped of anything interesting, I let my partners know when I'm at the crossing in case something happens; Paranoid? Possibly. But the potentiality of something going horribly wrong is through the roof, and there's increasingly little recourse. Yes, citizens especially should be insulated from this, but we're seeing egregious violations on so many fronts I don't want to trust that to hold.
And, yet, the CBP can cause you any number of headaches and subject you to intimidation and humiliation prior to your actually being waved through -- especially if they deem you "difficult".
Similar to lots of the other comments in this thread, I'm subjected to additional screenings every time I come back into the country. I'm a completely average middle-aged white guy and I have no idea why this happens. Is it because I'm anxious? I have a somewhat common name; perhaps they've confused me with someone else? Was it because I was at Schipol the same time as The Underwear Bomber or because I went to Turkey on vacation? I will (probably) never know why but it's so unpleasant that I've stopped leaving the country for fun (something I used to love) and has had a real, negative effect on my relationship with my spouse.
Thanks for the reminder. I had forgotten all about that. Is yet another point as to why effectively the USA does not even actually exist anymore more is the Constitution valid.
Some may be confused by reading that or even scoff at it, but it’s really not any different than any other kind of fraud by deception where, e.g., you think you have a certain amount of assets with Bernie Madoff that make you rich, but in reality it’s all just fake and does not actually exist at all.
It’s just that Americans haven’t realized that their country has being defrauded out from under them, much like how the EU just snuck in and went from standardizing trade to co-opting democratic self-determination and just swiping national sovereignty out from under the people of Europe because the ruling class said “no take backs” and that’s just how it’s going to be now.
Well they should stop worrying. They will be fine. I suggest they don't make MSNBC or similar as their only news outlet. (and yes same for people who only watch Fox news or Newsmax).
You cannot actually deny entry of an American into America, at least not of a true naturally born American to at least one equally naturally born American parent and relatives, probably at least two more generations back.
People are not going to like hearing this, but everyone else who were merely made American citizens by process, has a bit of an increasingly minor risk of being denied entry if they or their first generation relative are deemed to have received their citizenship illicitly and or shown or even just accused of foreign ties, let alone any involvement of espionage or terrorism.
More likely is that even in cases of espionage and terrorism, the government would simply prefer permitting entry and then simply prosecuting people.
> You cannot actually deny entry of an American into America, at least not of a true naturally born American
What counts as natural born is constantly subject to fuckery. (The Citizenshop Clause is all the Constitution has to say on citizenship, and it doesn’t directly address either naturalization or revocation.)It took Congress in 1924 to admit American Indians are born in America [1]. Meanwhile, we've created de facto exemptions on the positive side for e.g. John McCain [2] and Ted Cruz [3].
A future Congress (or potentially just the President, under Trump's precedents) could absolutely vote to strip citizenship from e.g. dual nationals or people who have travelled to this or that country.
What change in visa policies have driven the change in rank? Have any countries switched on visa requirements for US passports? Or are other countries switching off visa requirements?
Edit: Thanks to the responses. My bad for missing that in the article.
> The loss of visa-free access to Brazil in April due to a lack of reciprocity, and the US being left out of China’s rapidly expanding visa-free list, marked the start of its downward slide. This was followed by adjustments from Papua New Guinea and Myanmar, which further eroded the US score while boosting other passports. Most recently, Somalia’s launch of a new eVisa system and Vietnam’s decision to exclude the US from its latest visa-free additions delivered the final blow, pushing it out of the Top 10.
>US being left out of China’s rapidly expanding visa-free list
Really? My visa is probably expired now but I remember my Chinese visa being sort of a headache to deal with 10 years back from the US. Certainly a couple different visas to there weren't "visa-free."
Most Western countries (except the US, as noted) now have legit visa free access to China. No e-visa, no ESTA, no advance notice, no nothing, just rock up and get stamped in.
And to be clear, this is not the previous restricted "X hours transit, don't leave the city" thing, but a full blown 30 day entry permit valid for the entire country (minus Tibet), any port of entry, any port of departure.
Yes, this is a massive departure from their previous policy, but yes, it's real. Having also gone through the regular China visa process multiple times in the past, I could hardly believe it myself when I used it earlier this year.
Ugh, Canada used to have this kind of visa free travel (at least for British people) and it was really jarring to me. I spent the whole flight worrying that I would be denied entry upon landing, but nope: no worries.
Until I tried to travel back a few years later and they didn't let me board the plane because they had changed to an e-visa scheme called eTA.
My own fault for not checking, but, in fairness, I didn't expect the agreements between Canada and the UK to have materially changed.
What part are you disagreeing with? It says the US is being left out of China's expanding visa-free program, not that 10 years ago the USA was on the visa-free list for China
The US was not on a visa-free list for China 10 years ago the last time I applied (at least for a business event). But maybe it isn't on some expanding visa-free list which is something I really haven't paid attention to.
I and a couple of friends of mine have been to China since they introduced visa-free access for my country (low on various "passport power" lists), and it's been an absolutely painless experience. No advance notice, no ETA (like e.g. South Korea does), just buy the tickets and go. The officers at the airport were very nice too.
If anything, dealing with WeChat and AliPay is much more of a headache.
Most countries eligible for the South Korean ETA are currently also exempt at least until the end of 2025; I think chances are good the exception will be extended. I travelled visa-free to both China and South Korea last year and the experience was quite similar.
> but I remember my Chinese visa being sort of a headache to deal with 10 years back from the US
I got one recently and it's not bad, except that it needs to be done in-person at an embassy based on the state you live in, so there's a 90% chance you'll have to trust a third party business next door to the embassy to walk your documents over and mail them back to you after. I would much rather be visa-free though, it was expensive and time consuming for no real reason.
This is mostly answered in the article but in short China refused to extend preferential status and the United States refused to reciprocate with several other countries who in the past were content with an asymmetrical relationship but are no longer.
In general, I think many of the countries that used to be visa-free or visa-on-arrival are implementing Electronic Travel authorizations or e-Visa systems, which decreases mobility in general.
The destinations include some territories like Puerto Rico which aren't passport issuers, but which have visa requirements which may differ from their parent country.
In practice, this means the index assigns more weight to passports accepted by nations with many island territories - like the United States.
Colonialism? Take the Falkland Islands as a small example. Ever since the British won the war in 1983 all inhabitants were automatically granted British Citizenship, hence no need for a separate passport.
Just guessing, but could be some colonies with some special travel rules. Eg. some islands somewhere in the middle of nowhere are technically part of eg. France, people living there have french passports, but schengen visas might not be valid to travel there.
I wanted to do an analysis (but lacked a quality dataset or time/willingness to prepare one) that coded mobility differently.
First off, I'd weight countries that grant visa-free access to relatively few other countries (e.g., China, USA, ECOWAS) more than countries that are comparatively more lenient (e.g. countries like Samoa, Tuvalu that grant visa-free access to everyone).
Secondly, I'd additionally weight for residency mobility - the ability to work and live in another country with few conditions (e.g. Schengen area, Common Travel Area, Trans-Tasman Travel Arrangement, MERCOSUR, ECOWAS, CARICOM, Freedom of movement in the Gulf States). Countries like Canada, Japan and Singapore may score well on paper for travel mobility, but are definitely weaker than EU passports that allow you to migrate to where jobs are and improve your own economic outcomes.
Really you want to weight by tourism desirability. The Maldives, Jamaica, Croatia, Iceland, Fiji should rate more highly than India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nigeria despite having a tiny fraction of the population.
> Doesn’t really matter as it is in relation to what it used to good for.
If you read the actual article, it seems a US passport is about as good as it always was. It seems like much of the change is various countries expanding visa free travel, just not to Americans. Before when I went to China or Vietnam, I had to get a visa. Now with this change in ranking...I still have to get a visa.
The top list would be all EU countries since not only they can travel almost anywhere, but they have the right to live and work in 20+ other rich countries.
Why is he being downvoted??? He’s right. Do you care more about China or Barbados? Clearly some countries are much more important than others, and it is fairly easy to make a decent ranking of importance (even if the exact ranking will vary from person to person)
> Clearly some countries are much more important than others, and it is fairly easy to make a decent ranking of importance
"Important" in this way? At least by the current methodology, it's fairly bias-free, which if you add "Countries that are more important than others weight more" to the mix you cannot call it bias-free anymore.
Counting each country equally is itself a bias -- it slides the weighting 100% towards international recognition of a country. As a result, Somalia and Morocco are weighted equally, which is obviously incorrect; nobody is upset if they can't go to Somalia. A common-sense weighting would be imperfect, but almost certainly better than an equal weighting on each county. "Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good".
edit: it _SHOULD NOT MATTER_, but I grew up in Turkey, am half Persian, and am very liberal. If that matters to you, please think good and hard about what kind of person you have become.
China absolutely is interesting to a lot of people. Both from a business perspective and for tourism. It's a country with several thousand years of history, after all.
It's a bit of a dumb ranking. Being able to live in the UK visa-free is probably more "valuable" than being able to enter Trinidad & Tobago, and all the top passports differ by 1 or 2 countries that are on that level.
Leaving aside the ranking this article itself employs, it does seem to track. I will arbitrarily and qualitatively try and touch on some perceived benefits of a US passport / citizenship that seem to be falling:
- Visaless entry
- Ability to skip lines or fast track through immigration
- Embassy services
- Marriage prospect: Often US citizens were desirable or at least neutral partners for international relationships. Foreign nationals considered the option of relocating to America favorably. A partner may not want to relocate to the US now, or want a relationship with an American.
- General disapproval of Americans abroad in some countries
- Likelihood the government would intervene on your behalf. Brittney Griner / Travis King.
The Trump government does not seem as capable at governing. The Democrats seem to be be better at governing and favor bureaucracy more, whether this is true or perceived, I will not claim to know. The government itself is not funded/shut down currently which may impact embassies and clerical services. There does seem to be a general dislike of America and frustration building in many populations and presumably governments. The standing of America has greatly fallen in the world. While hostilities seem to be rising, America's ability to project soft and real power seem to be falling. This can impact some of the points above.
I am sure there are other points I have missed and factors I have overlooked. I would say that the general perception of the "strength" of a passport has fallen.
Do these claims account for the fact that if a US citizen applies for a visa to most places, they'll probably get one, as opposed to many developing country passports, where if you apply for a visa, you probably won't?
> Prof. Peter J. Spiro of Temple University Law School in Philadelphia says while US citizenship remains a valuable status, it’s no longer good enough as a standalone. “In coming years, more Americans will be acquiring additional citizenships in whatever way they can. Multiple citizenship is being normalized in American society. While it may be a bit of an exaggeration, as one social media poster recently put it, “dual citizenship is the new American dream”.
What nonsense is this? It's really frickin' hard for a normal person to acquire additional citizenships, and I think the easy "citizenship by decent" options that some Americans had access to are closing. There's no way the requisite long foreign residencies is becoming "normalized" in American society.
Maybe Prof. Peter J. Spiro only hangs out with very rich people who can buy some citizenships through investment, but if he does he should refrain on commenting on what's "normalized" because he needs to touch grass.
> Maybe Prof. Peter J. Spiro only hangs out with very rich people who can buy some citizenships
That's what it sounds like to my ears. Plus, according to Wikipedia, anyway, he is a leading expert on dual citizenship. I suspect he lives in fairly rarified air and also that this is a special interest of his, so people who don't have the means required to have additional citizenships aren't really much on his radar.
That said, people don't necessarily have to be wealthy to do it (although I think they have to not be poor). A friend did it by living and working (in a field in demand) for enough decades in the country that he became eligible to apply for citizenship. He's nowhere near wealthy, but squarely middle class.
No, this is right. I know a German immigration lawyer whose work has quadrupled. There are lots of ways to get dual citizenship. Actually European countries are very excited about the reverse brain drain.
There used to be a bit of a taboo against having multiple citizenships. Now somebody like Travis Kalanick of Uber fame can pick up Saudi (!) citizenship and nobody bats an eye.
I don't know Travis, and I don't want Saudi "citizenship" (a rather dubious term when applied to a polity that is neither a city nor a republic), but I can think of some possible reasons:
• Going places that have visa-free travel for Saudis but not for US citizens.
• Evading other forms of discrimination against US citizens, for example, difficulty in opening Swiss bank accounts.
• Consular help from the Saudi consulate in third countries that are neither the US nor Saudi Arabia. Right now it's Saudi embassies rather than US embassies that murder journalists who criticize the head of state, but that could reverse within Travis's lifetime.
• Owning Saudi land and businesses. Many countries have restrictions on land ownership by non-citizens, and Saudi Arabia (one of the world's richest countries in solar resources) is one of them, although it isn't completely prohibited in all cases. Similarly for starting businesses.
• Residency options in third countries. Even today, there are probably countries where Saudi citizens can live more easily than US citizens; if I had to guess, I'd guess Egypt, Jordan, and Morocco. Morocco is famous, among other things, for being where Roland Barthes lived in order to have sex with a lot of young boys. I wouldn't venture to suggest that Travis is looking for that, but all three countries also have vast solar resources.
• Living in Saudi Arabia itself has its appeals. The Line project is not someplace I'd want to live, even if a significant fraction of it does get built (Arcosanti is more my speed) but it would at least be interesting to see.
> So while prevalence of dual citizenship is around 0.3% to 1.5% of population [3], that represnts 0.8% to 4% of passport holders.
What proportion of the people with dual citizenship are naturalized citizens? I'd expect it's well north of 50%. And that's an entirely different thing than the "Americans will be acquiring additional citizenships in whatever way they can" we're discussing here.
I don't know! I do know that before ~2007 a passport wasn't needed to travel within North America, and that some of the growth since then is because of the relatively new passport requirement ("Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative").
The score seems to be based on the number of countries you can enter without a visa.
This is pretty meaningless as countries like St. Kitts and Nevis (Caribbean, population 47,000) and China are treated as the same.
And (admittedly maybe by design) it ignores the real important part of citizenship, which is the residence rights to your home country and beyond when you're not traveling the world. The city-state of Singapore is nice, but a French passport holder's right to live in any EU country is fantastic.
Edit: Searching around, this (2018) is exactly what I had in mind--travel freedom + settlement freedom: https://www.nationalityindex.com/
Also I fail to see the distinction between an ESTA/ETIAS and a visa. If I need to apply ahead of travelling, and pay a fee, and this may be denied, how is that not a visa?
I think it's the other way around. If you need a visa to enter, the government considers you more suspicious than those who can enter without a visa. And you will likely face more scrutiny at the border.
Some countries have visa-on-arrival schemes, which are the opposite of ESTA and ETIAS. The visa still exists as a formality (maybe due to reciprocity or as a tourist tax), but you need to do little beyond paying the fee to get one.
Because applying for a visa takes money, time, and a visit to the embassy.
ESTA/ETIAS gets automatically approved within a few minutes of paying for the fee (I guess this is true for 99.999% of applicants).
Very few countries allow people to just show up and cross the border. US citizens had that privilege in a lot of places, but it looks like it’s changing now.
I have never visited an embassy to get a visa--though I did cancel a couple of business trips when it became too much of an effort because of timing relative to other trips. I've travelled to a bunch of countries where I could just go through immigration with a US passport or maybe pay for a visa on arrival.
Is this really surprising given the trade wars the U.S. has started with every country in the world, threats of invasion against allies, and the general lack of qualifications that current U.S. cabinet members have like Hegseth and RFK?
It has little to do with the trade wars or threats of invasion by Trump.
It pertains to a small number of countries that are agitated by lack of reciprocity; and then there's China. China being a nation that is directly supporting Russia's war against Ukraine. The same Russia that is very clearly plotting to attack NATO. Aka the China that the US is fighting a proxy war against in Ukraine. The same China that the US is actively preparing to go to war with over Taiwan if necessary. What exactly am I to expect from that situation?
It's going to get worse, I'd imagine, as more Americans double down on 2nd citizenship, permanent residencies. As the US becomes more unstable, the risk of overstaying is going to increase. Countries will start yanking visa free entry as the US falls apart.
The stock market isn't representative of 1) how the economy is doing and 2) how your civil rights are doing.
Would you say the surveillance state we've lived under since Bush is fine because the stock market is at an all time high? Similarly for the global inflation under COVID: is it fine since stocks went up?
Not necessarily. There are quite a few levers the U.S. government and Federal Reserve have to keep things humming along since we're a giant. Stocks are not as rational as you're making them out to be. As the saying goes "gradually, then suddenly"
Your remarks about "shorting the market if you think this" are not only ignorant but passive aggressive.
The USA could well be heading for autarky. For the sake of USAians I hope not, for the rest of the world it would be good for us, in the way a heart attack can be good for your health.
>"Confident of their unlimited power, empires create unnecessary problems for themselves until they can no longer cope with them ... And the United States is now walking the Soviet Union's path, and its gait is confident and steady."
filibuster, gerrymandering, fptp, electoral college, supreme court, electric cars, J6, climate issues, Russia, aging congressmen, inequality, inflation ... each individually is (probably) solvable, but they just keep piling up like tetris.
For the full context, it looks like Henley & Partners is providing services like obtaining second citizenship, so it's in their best interest to highlight the US passport "decline". Further down they say "Americans Lead Global Rush for Second Citizenships", which just happens to be the thing they are selling.
Henley's index ranks America 12th, with 180 visa-free destinations [1]. The Global Passport Power Rank 2025 ranks America 9th, with 168...MS [2].
Maybe they count destinations differently?
[1] https://www.henleyglobal.com/passport-index
[2] https://www.passportindex.org/byRank.php
they do, you can see "American Samoa", "Bonaire; St. Eustatius and Saba", "French West Indies" etc in Henley's rank, for example.
Interesting. Not the exact same but most of countries i've checked in both come out near the same spot.
I wish there was an index where not all countries are weighted equally, but according to their desirability. Multiply each country by some factor which is defined by how many people would list it as their desirable destination. The index where France and Tuvalu are both counted equally makes no sense to me, with all due respect to the latter.
It really depends what you desire. For some it's the savoir vivre, for others it may be the lack of an extradition treaty, or the taxes.
While the desire itself is subjective, the question "how many people would like to visit the country X out of a million" is objective.
> out of a million
The answer could change depending on how you select the million people you are asking this question to.
“When a metric ceases to match a target, invent a new measure.”
with apologies to Goodhart.
I mean, a major reason the US fell in the ranks is because Brazil has stopped giving the US, Canada, and Australia visa-free access, Vietnam didn't include the US in the list of countries it chose to extend visa-free access to, Venezuela has extended visa-free access to a number of EU and EFTA members, and Papua New Guinea extended visa-free access to a number of nations recently. Also, the UK has begun enforcing the Electronic Travel Authorisation (ETA) on all countries excluding Ireland, which means the UK is no longer visa free.
The UK's ranking fell for similar reasons as well.
If not having visa-free access to PNG or Venezuela is a metric, it's not a fairly relevant metric, or at least a very lossy metric.
Yeah! What a useless metric. Who would want to go to China, Brazil or Vietnam when you can visit Cincinnatti! /s
Why should Americans, Canadians, or Europeans get visa free access to China, Brazil, or Vietnam when Chinese, Brazilian, and Vietnamese nationals need to get visas to visit America, Canada, or Europe?
Brazilians have visa on arrival in Schengen, so Europeans get visa on arrival in Brazil in reciprocity.
Didn't realize Brazil has Schengen access! That's wild (in a good way)!
Out of curiosity, why don't we see the same degree of Brazilian immigration to the EU then versus the US?
Is it solely economic (ie. a Brazilian accountant is more likely to demand a salary significantly higher that that back in Brazil by moving to the US versus an EU state)?
> Out of curiosity, why don't we see the same degree of Brazilian immigration to the EU then versus the US?
There are a lot of Brazilians in the EU, most have legal residency through heritage (Spanish, Portuguese, Italian are quite common 2nd passports) or through work visas.
You can't discount the huge influence the USA has over Latin America, and specially over Brazil, people look up to the USA as a benchmark/role model, many Brazilians dream of "making it" by moving to the USA; Brazilians also suffer a huge influence from the consumerist aspect of the USA, they want to have nice cars (which are cheaper relative to salaries than in Brazil), they want to buy electronics that are expensive in Brazil: consoles, computers, phones, they want to buy clothing that is considered expensive in Brazil, there's a quite markedly status-chasing aspect of Brazilian society that mimics the American one. Brazil was somewhat molded according to the USA: car-dependent, consumerist, etc. so a lot of Brazilians believe that the USA is what Brazil "could be" if it was richer.
There are many support groups from past immigrants to help out settling in the USA, it's also much easier to live in the USA undocumented than in most of the EU: in the USA there's no centralised identification at the federal level, in the EU most countries require you to have a tax ID to do most of the basic bureaucracies you need to settle.
It's a confluence of factors that make Brazilian immigration into the USA very different than into the EU. From my experience most Brazilians in the EU are high-skilled immigrants or have a second citizenship or are spouses of natives/citizens.
> Out of curiosity, why don't we see the same degree of Brazilian immigration to the EU then versus the US?
There's actually an estimated ~2 million Brazilians in the EU and also in the US (out of 220 millions)
Here's my attempt (ChatGPT deep research). Each country is weighted by a factor derived from the tourism data:
https://chatgpt.com/share/68f00ad0-a9fc-800e-abac-584703b92a...
And the results:
Tier 1 — Global Leaders (Scores 98–100)
Singapore — 100
Germany — 99
France — 99
Italy — 99
Spain — 99
Japan — 99
South Korea — 99
Switzerland — 98
Finland — 98
Sweden — 98
Denmark — 98
Netherlands — 98
Norway — 98
Belgium — 98
Austria — 98
Ireland — 98
Portugal — 98
Greece — 98
Luxembourg — 98
Hungary — 98
Malta — 98
Liechtenstein — 98
Tier 2 — High Mobility with Minor Gaps (Scores 94–97)
Poland — 97
United Arab Emirates — 96
United States — 95
United Kingdom — 94
Canada — 94
Australia — 93
New Zealand — 93
Tier 3 — Strong Regional Power Passports (Scores 85–93)
Czech Republic — 92
Iceland — 92
Slovenia — 91
Estonia — 90
Latvia — 89
Lithuania — 89
Slovakia — 88
Chile — 87
Malaysia — 87
Israel — 86
Given the recent changes to American policy I know people with American passports who are worried they can't even go back into the United States.
Ever since 9/11 it's been harder for non-whites. That was long before any of this. I won't even bother now. It's not worth my freedom.
I was harassed and detained every single time I went back. Always something different, never anything to actually do with who I actually am or anything I actually did or didn't do.
Do you have any data to back this claim up or are you just stating your opinion?
I was routinely detained at passport control because there was a bad guy with my same name. It took some amount of time and being very polite to get me out of that.
I know a guy who shares a name with a one legged IRA bomber. One would think there would be some effort disambiguate name collisions. In this case a three year old could probably do it. Let’s see. One, two. Not the guy!!!
Ironically, a three year old can be on the list.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Fly_List#False_positives
> Numerous children (including many under the age of five, and some under the age of one) have generated false positives.
And at least on one occasion, a sitting US Senator: https://www.theregister.com/2004/08/19/senator_on_terror_wat...
It's been harder for people of middle eastern descent but that's about it. I'm nonwhite and have flown a lot and never had any issues. My friend is arab, hipster girl born in LA, and she always gets selected for screening.
I have had some issues as someone of Indian decent despite having an American accent and native born.
Whats the most common reason they’ve harnessed you over? Just wondering if they’re going based on prior issue on file? I’m of Indian descent , born and raised in the U.S - I must be the lucky one. Because I’ve never had any issues. Entering back in the country has been trouble free so far. Have you thought about signing up for global entry. Recently signed up for it myself and now I just skip talking to a human (and waiting in line)
Ok, so.. I don't know how to say this without sounding insensitive, but I'm a pretty traditional looking (albeit perhaps short) British, blue-eyed, white guy.
I have seriously never had a positive interaction with the US border force. Wether it's the TSA or another associated organisation (since I've been pestered by people who are not TSA).
I've been detained, questioned, randomly selected, given contradictory rules by different people, had things randomly confiscated and even been insulted.
I'm not confrontational, and I don't believe I stand out.
I have had exactly ONE positive interaction (in 2011) whereby I had accidentally travelled with a pocket knife in my checked luggage and due to the fact I was not allowed to check my luggage on the return journey (due to the train being delayed going into Newark; seriously, I understand why Americans distrust public transport) - I told the TSA agent about it and he was kind regarding it, offering condolences, but obviously destroying the knife.
I'm not sure if I'm on some kind of easing program to disincentivise me in particular from visiting the US, but I could easily see that if I was anything other than what I am in terms of race/religion/looks/citizenship: that I would presume that this was the reason.
And, for context, I've been to the US on average twice per year in the last 15 years, so this is my experience from around 30 trips, and 60-ish interactions with the international air apparatus.
It's a pretty decent country once I'm in though, though I wouldn't want to live there.
EDIT: I'm not sure why the parent is being downvoted, his anecdote is the same as mine.
Both things can be true; that it's on average a shitty experience, and that it's on average an even shittier experience for folks of certain demographics.
I genuinely can't understand how it can be shittier.
Unless they're taking liberties with your wife and children or something.
You can't imagine a shittier outcome for bringing a banned weapon into an airport than "I told the TSA agent about it and he was kind regarding it, offering condolences"?
That was my one positive interaction, and yes it could have gone a lot worse, as mentioned. 1/60 is not exactly batting a thousand.
Every other interaction, I can't imagine being worse. Rude, tense, confusing, authoritarian with arbitrary detainment - with no acknowledgement of time or empathy for your own obligations (to board the plane for example); and heaven help you if you express your frustration.
> Every other interaction, I can't imagine being worse. Rude, tense, confusing and authoritarian; and heaven help you if you express your frustration.
https://publicintegrity.org/inequality-poverty-opportunity/i...
"Yet in these suits, innocent women — including minor girls — who were not found with any contraband say CBP officers subjected them to harsh interrogation that led to indignities that included unreasonable strip searches while menstruating to prohibited genital probing. Some women were also handcuffed and transported to hospitals where, against their will, they underwent pelvic exams, X-rays and in one case, drugging via IV, according to suits. Invasive medical procedures require a detainee’s consent or a warrant. In two cases, women were billed for procedures."
> Every other interaction, I can't imagine being worse.
Oh, I can help you with that!
> Arar was detained during a layover at John F. Kennedy International Airport in September 2002 on his way home to Canada from a family vacation in Tunis.[1] He was held without charges in solitary confinement in the United States for nearly two weeks, questioned, and denied meaningful access to a lawyer.[1][2] The US government suspected him of being a member of Al Qaeda and deported him, not to Canada, his current home and the passport on which he was travelling, but to Syria.[3][4] He was detained in Syria for almost a year, during which time he was tortured by Syrian authorities, according to the findings of a commission of inquiry ordered by the Canadian government, until his release to Canada. The Syrian government later stated that Arar was "completely innocent."[5][6] A Canadian commission publicly cleared Arar of any links to terrorism, and the government of Canada later settled out of court with Arar. He received C$10.5 million and Prime Minister Stephen Harper formally apologized to Arar for Canada's role in his "terrible ordeal."[7][8] Arar's story is frequently referred to as "extraordinary rendition" but the US government insisted it was a case of deportation.[14]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maher_Arar
Hopefully, given that little intuition pump, you can also imagine that he could have died from the torture instead of ever returning home.
Exactly. This is what I mean.
> I have seriously never had a positive interaction with the US border force. Wether it's the TSA or another associated organisation (since I've been pestered by people who are not TSA)
The trick is to pay to not interact. Global Entry, TSA PreCheck with Digital ID, et cetera.
And for the record, I'm dark-eyed and brown skinned. There are absolutely racists in the Trump administration. But they don't seem to have co-opted this element yet. Instead, it just presents the classic American preference for wealth.
(Note: I'm not endorsing the system. TSA PreCheck makes sense; the fee for it does not. Same for Global Entry.)
These days at many airports, precheck has the same procedures as normal screening. You keep your shoes on, laptops and liquids stay in the bag, and you don't show a boarding pass. And the lines are the same length.
Global entry is a real difference, but you need to travel internationally quite a bit to make the application/renewal process worth it (conditional approval backlog is 12-24 months now, although it seems you skip to the front just in time to do interview-on-arrival on your next trip).
I call it the travel bribe. It excuses you from security theater. If you have an airline credit card they also reimburse the cost of the bribe.
you meant to write unequal treatment for the wealthy right?
> you meant to write unequal treatment for the wealthy right?
Yes. I'm not endorsing the system. Just stating why folks on HN might be having wildly different experiences.
Broadly speaking, if you have to interact with border control or airport security, you're going to have a bad time. The stupid, lazy and mean are overrepresented in their ranks. You may have a slightly-worse time with particularly physical affects. But I've absolutely watched my British-accented white friend from Atlanta get singled out every time for fuckery by their TSA.
If, on the other hand, you get the unequal wealth treatment, you won't see a disparity. Because there isn't one. You're rarely interacting with a human being.
Ah yes, the “give in to the system” strategy to avoid the deliberate conditioning to force everyone into the panopticon.
One easy trick to world domination prison planet…
> the “give in to the system” strategy to avoid the deliberate conditioning to force everyone into the panopticon
I'm not sure what I'm giving up by ceding fingerprints and a picture to a government agency that almost certainly already has both.
I know it's normal to criticize the US now being like that, but the reality is, this is a shared vision among the 5-Eyes countries if you dig deeper. It just happens that the US is very outspoken about it. In Canada, for example as I read a couple weeks ago, individuals "having some sort of geopolitical proximity to a concern of Canada" are being put under the microscope and seen as guilty until proven otherwise, primarily from the Middle East (or West Asia if you don't like that terminology), despite the fact that there was no 9/11 or similar event to trigger any reaction, and how’s that a “proximity concern” to Canada.
https://halifax.citynews.ca/2025/08/06/immigration-lawyers-s...
Weird.
I look stereotypical MENA and haven't faced any extra screening, and I travel a lot for work both domestically and abroad, and I'm too lazy to get Global Entry or TSA Pre so I'm dealing with general TSA.
Did your friend maybe travel to an Arab country at some point in time that either faced significant instability, a country that borders Syria+Iraq, or to the West Bank via Jordan?
Out of curiosity, which airports do you travel through most?
Domestically?
SFO, SeaTac, JFK, OHare, and ATX, with a decent showing for Logan, DCA, and RTP.
I disagree the paperwork is ridiculous. I don't mind racism I'm white and blue eyed like whatever. But now I have to jump through hoops to visit America? Pass.
Under U.S. law (8 U.S.C. §1185(b)), an American citizen cannot be permanently barred from re-entering the country.
I'm an American living outside the US. While this is true it feels a bit like how pedestrians have the right-of-way at road crossings: you're legally protected, but is right now the time to test how much people are going to respect that?
I crossed the US-Canada land border with a non-US friend to go to a birthday party a while back; they sent us to secondary so my friend could get their passport stamped (their previous visa had run out). CBP took the opportunity to search our car and tried to convince us they found weed before letting us go (neither of us use it).
Another time my wife and I (both citizens) were crossing and the border agent gave us a hard time for having different last names.
I can't imagine what it's like for people with less privilege than I, but I'm already to the point where I stress about crossing the border. I bring a spare phone, wiped of anything interesting, I let my partners know when I'm at the crossing in case something happens; Paranoid? Possibly. But the potentiality of something going horribly wrong is through the roof, and there's increasingly little recourse. Yes, citizens especially should be insulated from this, but we're seeing egregious violations on so many fronts I don't want to trust that to hold.
Yes.
And, yet, the CBP can cause you any number of headaches and subject you to intimidation and humiliation prior to your actually being waved through -- especially if they deem you "difficult".
Similar to lots of the other comments in this thread, I'm subjected to additional screenings every time I come back into the country. I'm a completely average middle-aged white guy and I have no idea why this happens. Is it because I'm anxious? I have a somewhat common name; perhaps they've confused me with someone else? Was it because I was at Schipol the same time as The Underwear Bomber or because I went to Turkey on vacation? I will (probably) never know why but it's so unpleasant that I've stopped leaving the country for fun (something I used to love) and has had a real, negative effect on my relationship with my spouse.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anwar_al-Awlaki would probably beg to differ.
Had no b idea about this. Thanks for sharing.
Thanks for the reminder. I had forgotten all about that. Is yet another point as to why effectively the USA does not even actually exist anymore more is the Constitution valid.
Some may be confused by reading that or even scoff at it, but it’s really not any different than any other kind of fraud by deception where, e.g., you think you have a certain amount of assets with Bernie Madoff that make you rich, but in reality it’s all just fake and does not actually exist at all.
It’s just that Americans haven’t realized that their country has being defrauded out from under them, much like how the EU just snuck in and went from standardizing trade to co-opting democratic self-determination and just swiping national sovereignty out from under the people of Europe because the ruling class said “no take backs” and that’s just how it’s going to be now.
>EU just snuck in and went from standardizing trade to co-opting democratic self-determination
Where did that happen?
There are a lot of little William Ropers in America. No mere law will get in the way of them doing what they think is good.
(Unless the supreme court says otherwise)
(Or you're Australian trying to get back into your country during a pandemic)
Hyperbole is a constitutionally protected right for all Americans.
Well they should stop worrying. They will be fine. I suggest they don't make MSNBC or similar as their only news outlet. (and yes same for people who only watch Fox news or Newsmax).
I do as well.
You cannot actually deny entry of an American into America, at least not of a true naturally born American to at least one equally naturally born American parent and relatives, probably at least two more generations back.
People are not going to like hearing this, but everyone else who were merely made American citizens by process, has a bit of an increasingly minor risk of being denied entry if they or their first generation relative are deemed to have received their citizenship illicitly and or shown or even just accused of foreign ties, let alone any involvement of espionage or terrorism.
More likely is that even in cases of espionage and terrorism, the government would simply prefer permitting entry and then simply prosecuting people.
> You cannot actually deny entry of an American into America, at least not of a true naturally born American
What counts as natural born is constantly subject to fuckery. (The Citizenshop Clause is all the Constitution has to say on citizenship, and it doesn’t directly address either naturalization or revocation.)It took Congress in 1924 to admit American Indians are born in America [1]. Meanwhile, we've created de facto exemptions on the positive side for e.g. John McCain [2] and Ted Cruz [3].
A future Congress (or potentially just the President, under Trump's precedents) could absolutely vote to strip citizenship from e.g. dual nationals or people who have travelled to this or that country.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_Citizenship_Act
[2] https://hls.harvard.edu/bibliography/why-john-mccain-was-a-c...
[3] https://hls.harvard.edu/bibliography/why-john-mccain-was-a-c...
>You cannot actually deny entry of an American into America
They can just say you aren't one, throw your passport in the bin and deport you to that prison in central America.
If you're lucky you'll have a family/lawyer that will notice you didn't get home and have the resources to get you back.
What change in visa policies have driven the change in rank? Have any countries switched on visa requirements for US passports? Or are other countries switching off visa requirements?
Edit: Thanks to the responses. My bad for missing that in the article.
From the article:
> The loss of visa-free access to Brazil in April due to a lack of reciprocity, and the US being left out of China’s rapidly expanding visa-free list, marked the start of its downward slide. This was followed by adjustments from Papua New Guinea and Myanmar, which further eroded the US score while boosting other passports. Most recently, Somalia’s launch of a new eVisa system and Vietnam’s decision to exclude the US from its latest visa-free additions delivered the final blow, pushing it out of the Top 10.
>US being left out of China’s rapidly expanding visa-free list
Really? My visa is probably expired now but I remember my Chinese visa being sort of a headache to deal with 10 years back from the US. Certainly a couple different visas to there weren't "visa-free."
Most Western countries (except the US, as noted) now have legit visa free access to China. No e-visa, no ESTA, no advance notice, no nothing, just rock up and get stamped in.
https://www.visaforchina.cn/DEL3_EN/tongzhigonggao/327343163...
And to be clear, this is not the previous restricted "X hours transit, don't leave the city" thing, but a full blown 30 day entry permit valid for the entire country (minus Tibet), any port of entry, any port of departure.
Yes, this is a massive departure from their previous policy, but yes, it's real. Having also gone through the regular China visa process multiple times in the past, I could hardly believe it myself when I used it earlier this year.
Fair enough. I haven't been to China in a while and probably won't so hadn't looked into the current procedures in quite a while.
Concur your response; you can get a 48hr transit visa on demand in China. The requirement is that you leave via the same port of entry.
Ugh, Canada used to have this kind of visa free travel (at least for British people) and it was really jarring to me. I spent the whole flight worrying that I would be denied entry upon landing, but nope: no worries.
Until I tried to travel back a few years later and they didn't let me board the plane because they had changed to an e-visa scheme called eTA.
My own fault for not checking, but, in fairness, I didn't expect the agreements between Canada and the UK to have materially changed.
>Most Western countries (except the US, as noted)
Whoa, Canada and the UK aren't western now? When did that happen?
I don't think "except" overrides "most" there. I'd probably have written it as "excepting" but it seems oddly pedantic to pick up on.
What part are you disagreeing with? It says the US is being left out of China's expanding visa-free program, not that 10 years ago the USA was on the visa-free list for China
The US was not on a visa-free list for China 10 years ago the last time I applied (at least for a business event). But maybe it isn't on some expanding visa-free list which is something I really haven't paid attention to.
No one said it was on that list.
I and a couple of friends of mine have been to China since they introduced visa-free access for my country (low on various "passport power" lists), and it's been an absolutely painless experience. No advance notice, no ETA (like e.g. South Korea does), just buy the tickets and go. The officers at the airport were very nice too.
If anything, dealing with WeChat and AliPay is much more of a headache.
Most countries eligible for the South Korean ETA are currently also exempt at least until the end of 2025; I think chances are good the exception will be extended. I travelled visa-free to both China and South Korea last year and the experience was quite similar.
> but I remember my Chinese visa being sort of a headache to deal with 10 years back from the US
I got one recently and it's not bad, except that it needs to be done in-person at an embassy based on the state you live in, so there's a 90% chance you'll have to trust a third party business next door to the embassy to walk your documents over and mail them back to you after. I would much rather be visa-free though, it was expensive and time consuming for no real reason.
We’re not being added to it and other countries are.
This is mostly answered in the article but in short China refused to extend preferential status and the United States refused to reciprocate with several other countries who in the past were content with an asymmetrical relationship but are no longer.
In general, I think many of the countries that used to be visa-free or visa-on-arrival are implementing Electronic Travel authorizations or e-Visa systems, which decreases mobility in general.
> the Henley Passport Index [...] includes 199 different passports and 227 different travel destinations
How come there are more destinations than passports?
The destinations include some territories like Puerto Rico which aren't passport issuers, but which have visa requirements which may differ from their parent country.
In practice, this means the index assigns more weight to passports accepted by nations with many island territories - like the United States.
Some parts of countries have different travel restrictions than others, for example, Greenland is not part of Schengen.
This could be one of those "falsehoods programmers believe about ..."
There are some other good ones in the other comments, including this one:
Falsehood: if a person has a U.S. Passport, they must be a U.S. Citizen.
Fact: Non-citizens can have a U.S. Passport (people born in American Samoa).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Samoan_citizenship_an...
Colonialism? Take the Falkland Islands as a small example. Ever since the British won the war in 1983 all inhabitants were automatically granted British Citizenship, hence no need for a separate passport.
Some destinations don't have passports. But all passport issuing places are in principle visitable.
This is an example of a passport issued by a recognized sovereign entity without any associated territory:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sovereign_Military_Order_of_Ma...
Puerto Rico, for example, counts as a destination but Puerto Ricans have US passports.
I'd imagine it's stuff like UK vs the various british islands
Just guessing, but could be some colonies with some special travel rules. Eg. some islands somewhere in the middle of nowhere are technically part of eg. France, people living there have french passports, but schengen visas might not be valid to travel there.
This is a silly metric, it weights every country the same. Any other weight would work better (population, GDP, etc)
I wanted to do an analysis (but lacked a quality dataset or time/willingness to prepare one) that coded mobility differently.
First off, I'd weight countries that grant visa-free access to relatively few other countries (e.g., China, USA, ECOWAS) more than countries that are comparatively more lenient (e.g. countries like Samoa, Tuvalu that grant visa-free access to everyone).
Secondly, I'd additionally weight for residency mobility - the ability to work and live in another country with few conditions (e.g. Schengen area, Common Travel Area, Trans-Tasman Travel Arrangement, MERCOSUR, ECOWAS, CARICOM, Freedom of movement in the Gulf States). Countries like Canada, Japan and Singapore may score well on paper for travel mobility, but are definitely weaker than EU passports that allow you to migrate to where jobs are and improve your own economic outcomes.
Really you want to weight by tourism desirability. The Maldives, Jamaica, Croatia, Iceland, Fiji should rate more highly than India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nigeria despite having a tiny fraction of the population.
Doesn’t really matter as it is in relation to what it used to good for.
> Doesn’t really matter as it is in relation to what it used to good for.
If you read the actual article, it seems a US passport is about as good as it always was. It seems like much of the change is various countries expanding visa free travel, just not to Americans. Before when I went to China or Vietnam, I had to get a visa. Now with this change in ranking...I still have to get a visa.
The top list would be all EU countries since not only they can travel almost anywhere, but they have the right to live and work in 20+ other rich countries.
Why is he being downvoted??? He’s right. Do you care more about China or Barbados? Clearly some countries are much more important than others, and it is fairly easy to make a decent ranking of importance (even if the exact ranking will vary from person to person)
> Do you care more about China or Barbados?
What if I do? Is this index only for US citizens to make use of?
> Clearly some countries are much more important than others, and it is fairly easy to make a decent ranking of importance
"Important" in this way? At least by the current methodology, it's fairly bias-free, which if you add "Countries that are more important than others weight more" to the mix you cannot call it bias-free anymore.
Counting each country equally is itself a bias -- it slides the weighting 100% towards international recognition of a country. As a result, Somalia and Morocco are weighted equally, which is obviously incorrect; nobody is upset if they can't go to Somalia. A common-sense weighting would be imperfect, but almost certainly better than an equal weighting on each county. "Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good".
edit: it _SHOULD NOT MATTER_, but I grew up in Turkey, am half Persian, and am very liberal. If that matters to you, please think good and hard about what kind of person you have become.
It's close, but the existence or not of some countries is sometimes disputed.
China absolutely is interesting to a lot of people. Both from a business perspective and for tourism. It's a country with several thousand years of history, after all.
It's funny you took it that way, I took it as dismissive at Barbados for being smaller, and it's not clear which one was actually intended.
Do you usually take those into account when planing trips?
yes?
"I'll go to India for my vacation! Sure, the beaches aren't anything like the Caribbeans, but you gotta realize: it's got WAY more people."
The beaches in the Andamans (near Thailand) and Lakshadweep (geologically part of the Maldives) can hold their own against any Caribbean beach.
https://www.eternalandamans.com/havelock-island/radhanagar-b...
https://www.gokitetours.com/top-beaches-in-lakshadweep-you-m...
India is a great place for a vacation, if you want to visit the historical sites and not just vegetate on a beach.
huh... I thought the most powerful passport was the German.
Irish, maybe? It's EU, which opens a lot of doors, plus you also get UK for free.
It's a bit of a dumb ranking. Being able to live in the UK visa-free is probably more "valuable" than being able to enter Trinidad & Tobago, and all the top passports differ by 1 or 2 countries that are on that level.
It changes often. Right now it's Singapore.
Leaving aside the ranking this article itself employs, it does seem to track. I will arbitrarily and qualitatively try and touch on some perceived benefits of a US passport / citizenship that seem to be falling:
- Visaless entry
- Ability to skip lines or fast track through immigration
- Embassy services
- Marriage prospect: Often US citizens were desirable or at least neutral partners for international relationships. Foreign nationals considered the option of relocating to America favorably. A partner may not want to relocate to the US now, or want a relationship with an American.
- General disapproval of Americans abroad in some countries
- Likelihood the government would intervene on your behalf. Brittney Griner / Travis King.
The Trump government does not seem as capable at governing. The Democrats seem to be be better at governing and favor bureaucracy more, whether this is true or perceived, I will not claim to know. The government itself is not funded/shut down currently which may impact embassies and clerical services. There does seem to be a general dislike of America and frustration building in many populations and presumably governments. The standing of America has greatly fallen in the world. While hostilities seem to be rising, America's ability to project soft and real power seem to be falling. This can impact some of the points above.
I am sure there are other points I have missed and factors I have overlooked. I would say that the general perception of the "strength" of a passport has fallen.
Do these claims account for the fact that if a US citizen applies for a visa to most places, they'll probably get one, as opposed to many developing country passports, where if you apply for a visa, you probably won't?
> Prof. Peter J. Spiro of Temple University Law School in Philadelphia says while US citizenship remains a valuable status, it’s no longer good enough as a standalone. “In coming years, more Americans will be acquiring additional citizenships in whatever way they can. Multiple citizenship is being normalized in American society. While it may be a bit of an exaggeration, as one social media poster recently put it, “dual citizenship is the new American dream”.
What nonsense is this? It's really frickin' hard for a normal person to acquire additional citizenships, and I think the easy "citizenship by decent" options that some Americans had access to are closing. There's no way the requisite long foreign residencies is becoming "normalized" in American society.
Maybe Prof. Peter J. Spiro only hangs out with very rich people who can buy some citizenships through investment, but if he does he should refrain on commenting on what's "normalized" because he needs to touch grass.
> Maybe Prof. Peter J. Spiro only hangs out with very rich people who can buy some citizenships
That's what it sounds like to my ears. Plus, according to Wikipedia, anyway, he is a leading expert on dual citizenship. I suspect he lives in fairly rarified air and also that this is a special interest of his, so people who don't have the means required to have additional citizenships aren't really much on his radar.
That said, people don't necessarily have to be wealthy to do it (although I think they have to not be poor). A friend did it by living and working (in a field in demand) for enough decades in the country that he became eligible to apply for citizenship. He's nowhere near wealthy, but squarely middle class.
No, this is right. I know a German immigration lawyer whose work has quadrupled. There are lots of ways to get dual citizenship. Actually European countries are very excited about the reverse brain drain.
Normalized != normal.
There used to be a bit of a taboo against having multiple citizenships. Now somebody like Travis Kalanick of Uber fame can pick up Saudi (!) citizenship and nobody bats an eye.
> Now somebody like Travis Kalanick of Uber fame can pick up Saudi (!) citizenship and nobody bats an eye.
Why the heck would you want one of those as a foreigner? You'd lose consular access if you ever ran afoul of the government there.
I don't know Travis, and I don't want Saudi "citizenship" (a rather dubious term when applied to a polity that is neither a city nor a republic), but I can think of some possible reasons:
• Going places that have visa-free travel for Saudis but not for US citizens.
• Evading other forms of discrimination against US citizens, for example, difficulty in opening Swiss bank accounts.
• Consular help from the Saudi consulate in third countries that are neither the US nor Saudi Arabia. Right now it's Saudi embassies rather than US embassies that murder journalists who criticize the head of state, but that could reverse within Travis's lifetime.
• Owning Saudi land and businesses. Many countries have restrictions on land ownership by non-citizens, and Saudi Arabia (one of the world's richest countries in solar resources) is one of them, although it isn't completely prohibited in all cases. Similarly for starting businesses.
• Residency options in third countries. Even today, there are probably countries where Saudi citizens can live more easily than US citizens; if I had to guess, I'd guess Egypt, Jordan, and Morocco. Morocco is famous, among other things, for being where Roland Barthes lived in order to have sex with a lot of young boys. I wouldn't venture to suggest that Travis is looking for that, but all three countries also have vast solar resources.
• Living in Saudi Arabia itself has its appeals. The Line project is not someplace I'd want to live, even if a significant fraction of it does get built (Arcosanti is more my speed) but it would at least be interesting to see.
> It's really frickin' hard for a normal person to acquire additional citizenships
Fewer than 2 in 5 Americans have a valid passport [1]. In some states, that approaches 1 in 5 [2].
So while prevalence of dual citizenship is around 0.3% to 1.5% of population [3], that represnts 0.8% to 4% of passport holders.
> only hangs out with very rich people who can buy some citizenships through investment
You may be underestimating the number of Americans with Canadian, Mexican and Caribbean heritage.
[1] https://today.yougov.com/travel/articles/35414-only-one-thir...
[2] https://www.americanprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/...
[3] https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=...
> So while prevalence of dual citizenship is around 0.3% to 1.5% of population [3], that represnts 0.8% to 4% of passport holders.
What proportion of the people with dual citizenship are naturalized citizens? I'd expect it's well north of 50%. And that's an entirely different thing than the "Americans will be acquiring additional citizenships in whatever way they can" we're discussing here.
Just a note that [1] is really out of date - in 2025, more than 50% of Americans have a passport. https://www.americanprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/...
Huh, what caused the surge between 2020 and 2025?
I don't know! I do know that before ~2007 a passport wasn't needed to travel within North America, and that some of the growth since then is because of the relatively new passport requirement ("Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative").
You might be underestimating how many US citizens have strong ties to other countries. My kids trivially get citizenship in my country of birth.
There are a lot of recent immigrants in the US.
The score seems to be based on the number of countries you can enter without a visa. This is pretty meaningless as countries like St. Kitts and Nevis (Caribbean, population 47,000) and China are treated as the same.
And (admittedly maybe by design) it ignores the real important part of citizenship, which is the residence rights to your home country and beyond when you're not traveling the world. The city-state of Singapore is nice, but a French passport holder's right to live in any EU country is fantastic.
Edit: Searching around, this (2018) is exactly what I had in mind--travel freedom + settlement freedom: https://www.nationalityindex.com/
Also I fail to see the distinction between an ESTA/ETIAS and a visa. If I need to apply ahead of travelling, and pay a fee, and this may be denied, how is that not a visa?
For one, having a visa comes with a high chance of being admitted to the country (although never 100%).
That is not true of schemes like ESTA or ETIAS.
I think it's the other way around. If you need a visa to enter, the government considers you more suspicious than those who can enter without a visa. And you will likely face more scrutiny at the border.
Some countries have visa-on-arrival schemes, which are the opposite of ESTA and ETIAS. The visa still exists as a formality (maybe due to reciprocity or as a tourist tax), but you need to do little beyond paying the fee to get one.
Because applying for a visa takes money, time, and a visit to the embassy.
ESTA/ETIAS gets automatically approved within a few minutes of paying for the fee (I guess this is true for 99.999% of applicants).
Very few countries allow people to just show up and cross the border. US citizens had that privilege in a lot of places, but it looks like it’s changing now.
I have never visited an embassy to get a visa--though I did cancel a couple of business trips when it became too much of an effort because of timing relative to other trips. I've travelled to a bunch of countries where I could just go through immigration with a US passport or maybe pay for a visa on arrival.
Not true - there are plenty of countries that have e-visa (online application).
This isn’t even the full story, because a lot of Americans when they travel abroad they pretend they are Canadians.
https://m.youtube.com/shorts/mJ6L9VFJP4w
Is this really surprising given the trade wars the U.S. has started with every country in the world, threats of invasion against allies, and the general lack of qualifications that current U.S. cabinet members have like Hegseth and RFK?
Remember when US vice president officially endorsed AfD? I do.
It has little to do with the trade wars or threats of invasion by Trump.
It pertains to a small number of countries that are agitated by lack of reciprocity; and then there's China. China being a nation that is directly supporting Russia's war against Ukraine. The same Russia that is very clearly plotting to attack NATO. Aka the China that the US is fighting a proxy war against in Ukraine. The same China that the US is actively preparing to go to war with over Taiwan if necessary. What exactly am I to expect from that situation?
Generally all countries are "agitated by" lacks of reciprocity; what's changed is that now they're no longer intimidated by the US.
Your analysis of the Ukraine war makes no sense.
It's going to get worse, I'd imagine, as more Americans double down on 2nd citizenship, permanent residencies. As the US becomes more unstable, the risk of overstaying is going to increase. Countries will start yanking visa free entry as the US falls apart.
"..as the US falls apart."
If you actually believe this, you are welcome to short American stocks. See how that works out.
The stock market isn't representative of 1) how the economy is doing and 2) how your civil rights are doing.
Would you say the surveillance state we've lived under since Bush is fine because the stock market is at an all time high? Similarly for the global inflation under COVID: is it fine since stocks went up?
If you think the country is falling apart and people are going to flee, then yes stock market would fall if those things did actually happen.
Not necessarily. There are quite a few levers the U.S. government and Federal Reserve have to keep things humming along since we're a giant. Stocks are not as rational as you're making them out to be. As the saying goes "gradually, then suddenly"
Your remarks about "shorting the market if you think this" are not only ignorant but passive aggressive.
Chickens are slowly coming home to roost.
The USA could well be heading for autarky. For the sake of USAians I hope not, for the rest of the world it would be good for us, in the way a heart attack can be good for your health.
Yes, the chickens are coming home because checks notes Papua New Guinea and Myanmar now require visas.
I think the US will survive despite that.
Reminds me of a speech by Putin (he would know)
>"Confident of their unlimited power, empires create unnecessary problems for themselves until they can no longer cope with them ... And the United States is now walking the Soviet Union's path, and its gait is confident and steady."
filibuster, gerrymandering, fptp, electoral college, supreme court, electric cars, J6, climate issues, Russia, aging congressmen, inequality, inflation ... each individually is (probably) solvable, but they just keep piling up like tetris.