
The Contentious History of the Passport (2017) - tosh
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/travel/features/a-history-of-the-passport/
======
emilecantin
> Depending on our country of origin, a passport may grant us extreme
> privilege or extreme distress.

For a vivid example of this, see "Sailing Uma" on Youtube. It's a couple
traveling by sailboat around the world. He has a Canadian passport, she has a
Haitian passport. They don't talk about this much, but she frequently has much
more onerous paperwork requirements in order to travel, even right up to being
denied entry in some countries.

Earlier this year, they arrived in Europe and she got granted a ridiculous
Schengen visa (see this video:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EgLBJXbkkQk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EgLBJXbkkQk)).
It has since been resolved, but it took the intervention of a high-powered
lawyer who was either very expensive, or free only because they're "famous".

Honestly a pretty ridiculous system in my opinion.

~~~
refurb
Why is that a ridiculous system?

The risk of someone illegally residing in a country is different by
nationality.

The chance of a Canadian illegally staying in the US is super low. The chance
of someone from Haiti is high.

Why wouldn’t there be different requirements?

~~~
scoopdewoop
It might seem ridiculous to section off the entire world with armed guards and
determine who can go where based on the lottery of birth.

~~~
refurb
It's impossible for a country to be sovereign and at the same time not have
control over who enters or leaves a country.

So yeah, if you want to get rid of the very idea of countries, it could
work...maybe.

~~~
elliekelly
So most of Europe isn’t sovereign then?

~~~
refurb
Can anyone in the world just walk into the EU? No.

------
Scoundreller
Then there’s the occasional under-reliance on passports.

If you’re a “Permanent Resident” of Canada (basically a permit to live and
work, but is only permanent if you meet the continuing requirements), you get
a PR Card (which expires, but your status doesn’t mean your status has).

If you have one, Canada requires that you travel back to Canada with one
(except on land borders). You’re not allowed to use your non-Canadian
passport... because they know you should have a PR Card.

But what’s they point of requiring the card if they’re confident that you have
PR status?

Oh, and the cards are now taking 300 days to renew. And they’re good for 5
years.

~~~
mynegation
That is true that permanent resident needs a PR card to enter Canada, but last
time I checked (granted, very long ago), non-Canadian passport is also
required, together with the card.

~~~
smnrchrds
You are indeed correct. But the OP's point is orthogonal to yours. For the
record, I do not know if their point is correct. I just understood what they
are trying to say.

Imagine you are a Canadian citizen, who also has French citizenship. Imagine
you don't have a Canadian passport, but have your French one. French passport
holders don't need a visa to enter Canada. So all should be good, right? You
should be able to enter Canada with your French passport.

But the law does not allow that. If you are a Canadian citizen, you _must_
enter Canada with a Canadian passport.

OP's point is this:

Imagine you are a French citizen who is a Canadian PR travelling to Canada. As
before, you _cannot_ enter Canada with your French passport alone. French
passport if you were not a Canadian PR would have been OK. French passport
with a Canadian PR card would have also been OK. French passport without
Canadian PR card if you are a Canadian PR is not OK.

But the only way it can be shown that this is not OK is if the border agents
know that you are a PR and are not carrying your PR card. But if they know you
are a PR, then why would they need you to show them a card?

~~~
Scoundreller
Bingo on the last point. Though if you make it to the border, you’re okay
(they can’t really deny entry if you can prove your PRness in other ways). The
issue is that they’ve created an apparatus to deny you boarding onto
commercial vessels in the first place. You could always charter your own jet
and get around it.

There are a few exceptions for Canadians not requiring a Canadian Passport.
Namely: If you have a US Passport.

------
082349872349872
"cancel culture" circa 1950:
[https://books.google.ch/books?id=pqPVuJG5Qh0C&pg=PA145&lpg=P...](https://books.google.ch/books?id=pqPVuJG5Qh0C&pg=PA145&lpg=PA145&dq=paul+robeson+passport&source=bl&ots=-CxEOZnfQN&sig=ACfU3U1i4vzLEVP1oScmCOQbBNiUxWTweQ&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjH0uq_k53qAhXGxMQBHbHnAsEQ6AEwD3oECBoQAQ#v=onepage&q=paul%20robeson%20passport&f=false)

"... in July of 1950, [Paul] Robeson, who had held a passport continuously
since 1922, was asked by two agents of the State Department to relinquish his
current passport."

~~~
082349872349872
or circa 1966:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muhammad_Ali#Exile_and_comebac...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muhammad_Ali#Exile_and_comeback)
"He was systematically denied a boxing license in every state and stripped of
his passport."

------
JSavageOne
> With their microchips and holograms, biometric photos and barcodes, today’s
> passports can seem like stunning feats of modern technology

Actually it boggles my mind how low tech it is to require a physical paper
document for international travel in 2020.

My U.S. passport expires in less than 3 months, and for me to renew my
passport right now I'd have to mail it in and wait 2-3+ months due to COVID19
staffing reductions. Most countries don't allow you to travel with less than 3
months till expiry on your passport.

So basically I'm trapped in the U.S. now due to this stupid physical document
(just arrived back in the U.S. after living abroad so wasn't anticipating
this). I despise passports, and hope to live to see the day where we're no
longer required to present them.

Of course I'm still privileged to have a U.S. passport, as anyone who speaks
to citizens of countries like India already know.

~~~
NikolaNovak
I think it's a matter of priorities and experience.

I've seen various IT failure modes. This results in me being completely
unwilling to be caught in a strange country WITHOUT something physical and
tangible in my hand.

In fact, the most disempowering feeling in my life has repeatedly been when a
border guard takes my passport away to one building and I'm directed to
proceed somewhere else (happened a lot at Canada/US border especially after
911). You feel completely naked and have no defense other than "this random
dude with a gun took it away and told me to stand here" \- opening itself to
any number of Kafkian nightmare scenarios.

~~~
082349872349872
The Kafkian scenario is why I posted the cousin comment about Paul Robeson.
The US didn't use passports controls to keep him _out_ , but to keep him _in_.

(Comrade Rabinovich, with whom will you be staying in Israel? / My cousin. /
But comrade, you told us you had no relatives abroad. / That's right, he's not
abroad, he's at home in Israel. _I 'm_ the one who's abroad.)

------
TMWNN
>In black and white photos and crackly films shot through with static, a
classic image of the United States at the turn of the last century emerges: a
near constant rush of immigrants, most destined to pass through Ellis Island.
There they were given a cursory disease check, questioned, and in most cases,
allowed to proceed on their journeys inward. This was easy enough to do
without a global standard for identifying documents. Now, as immigration
policy takes center stage worldwide, it’s hard to imagine just how they got
through without them.

This is misleading, because it gives the impression that the US back then had
open borders in those pre-passport days. It did not, at least at Ellis Island
and its counterparts at other port cities. Those disease checks were cursory
because all such were cursory c. 1900.

More relevant, no one was allowed in, regardless of health check, unless they
could prove that they had either financial resources to support themselves, or
a US sponsor willing to provide such support. Ocean liner companies like
Cunard, White Star, and Hamburg American prescreened their passengers, because
those turned away were the transport companies' responsibility to carry back.
(The same goes for airlines today.)

~~~
pavlov
_"...no one was allowed in, regardless of health check, unless they could
prove that they had either financial resources to support themselves, or a US
sponsor willing to provide such support"_

That's an extremely low bar compared to the situation today. Getting a work
visa is expensive and difficult (presently impossible as the Trump
administration has shut down H1B and L1 visas).

If you do get a non-immigrant work visa and want to apply for permanent
residency, the wait times for green cards are up to 50 years, depending on
your country of origin.

~~~
rbecker
Low bar for Northwestern Europeans - almost no-one else was allowed in until
the Hart-Celler Act of 1965. The article is again misleading in implying the
pre-Hart-Celler Act restrictions were only enacted with the Emergency Quota
Act of 1921, when in fact it was US policy stretching back to the first
Naturalization Act of 1790.

~~~
TMWNN
The Naturalization Act of 1790 ([http://rs6.loc.gov/cgi-
bin/ampage?collId=llsl&fileName=001/l...](http://rs6.loc.gov/cgi-
bin/ampage?collId=llsl&fileName=001/llsl001.db&recNum=226limited)) limited
gaining US citizenship to "free white"s, but said nothing about entry of
others.

With some exceptions (such as the Chinese Exclusion Act), national/ethnic-
based restrictions for entry into the US did not come about until the
Emergency Quota Act of 1921, the purpose of which was to maintain the US's
ethnic balance as of the 1910 census. It had many, many exceptions (such as
the skilled of any race) and exemptions (all of Latin America, for example).
None of the above changed the Ellis Island restrictions I mentioned: No proof
of financial support (whether of oneself of from another), no entry.

