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.
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.
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'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.
Given what's happening in the US (and especially with the supreme court), I don't have much faith that any law the government finds inconvenient or objectionable will be adhered to.
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."
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.
At the risk of making it more complicated than it's worth, you really need multiple indexes. Population and GDP are possible metrics, but they still don't capture everything. If we take universities as an example there's an absolute rank, but then there's also a rank within sub-colleges to tell us that while Harvard is a high ranking university, it's comparatively much more renowned for law than for computer science.
> 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.
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.
Readit News
Maybe they count destinations differently?
[1] https://www.henleyglobal.com/passport-index
[2] https://www.passportindex.org/byRank.php
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with apologies to Goodhart.
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.
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
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.
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.
Dead Comment
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.
Dead Comment
Dead Comment
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.
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.
Deleted Comment
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...
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.
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."
How come there are more destinations than passports?
In practice, this means the index assigns more weight to passports accepted by nations with many island territories - like the United States.
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...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sovereign_Military_Order_of_Ma...
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.
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.
What if I do? Is this index only for US citizens to make use of?
"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.
- 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.
Deleted Comment