Worldwide visa restrictions on passports is reshaping the way we freely travel across the globe. Passports alone will not be good enough to travel in the future.
Globalisation, international crisis is constantly putting pressure on immigration systems in developed countries in order to protect borders. Immigration laws and restrictions on visa free movement is being tightened everywhere.
A decade ago, if you have a strong passport (eg. UK, Germany), you could just go anywhere with just a passport. Sadly this free movement with just a passport is fast changing everywhere and being curtailed replaced with soft visa restrictions. For example to visit US/Canada using a UK passport, an Electronic travel authorization (ESTA) is needed prior to travel under Visa waiver program (VWP)
The European Union (ETIAS) and United Kingdom expected impose ETA in the coming years, threatening free movement with passports. More countries are expected to follow the practice. Sadly once this free movement is replaced by soft visas, the absolute freedom of movement of boarding a plane with just a passport, pretty much comes to an end. Everybody is expected to carry eVisas or ETA before commencing their trip.
We recently did a study on visa restrictions of 199 passports in the world and we also used it to rank best passport in the world. We used to the dataset we collected to further study how much free movement with passports is restricted.
We found as of 2020,
- 45% of the countries impose hard visa restrictions (seek paper visa from consulate)
- 31% of countries offer free movement with just a passport
- 24% of countries require soft visas (eVisa / eTA / Visa on arrival)
We wanted to know impact on free movement will have, when the EU and UK impose ETA’s, curtailing free movement with just a passport.
Our results showed the free movement with passport will decline by 13.9% worldwide when EU/UK begin imposing soft travel restrictions in the form of ETA.
As of 2020, free movement with passports is still possible to visit Schengen area and United Kingdom.
- Schengen area: Nationals of the following 62 countries and territories holding ordinary passports may enter the Schengen Area. This will effect a number of countries including US/Canada when ETIAS goes live in 2021
- United Kingdom: Citizens of 56 countries and territories are visa-exempt for stays in the UK of up to 6 months. EU citizens enjoy free movement. This will completely change when UK imposes ETA in the future
Sadly, as we into 2020, the passports will no longer be powerful enough offering free movement to countries.
With declining passport power with single passports , we believe use of multiple passports to achieve free movement will play an important role in the future.
