"... 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."
>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.)
"...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.
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.
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.
> the wait times for green cards are up to 50 years, depending on your country of origin.
Ok, I'm going to press X to doubt. Going by the US Visa bulletin(https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/legal/visa-law0/v...) the longest wait is 24 years for F3-class from Mexico. Obviously that isn't good but let's not pretend that it's anywhere near 50 years.
The poster is right, though it takes a bit more work than briefly scanning the visa bulletin to figure it out.
The poster is likely referring to employment 2nd and 3rd preference workers of Indian nationality. The visa bulletin has a current wait time of 11 years. However, that is saying that someone who entered the line 11 years ago will qualify today. In the last 11 years vastly more Indian nationals have entered the green card line than have been processed out of it. It's not 100% clear how long someone who enters the line today will have to wait, but 50 years is a reasonable guess given the numbers.
> 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.
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.
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.)
I am actually curious how you would go about proving that you are a citizen of the EU. I am sure you need some form of identification to board an international flight even though it might be within the Schengen area.
So, from experience squatting in the Netherlands... nobody bothers to check, unless you look like you might be from Eastern Europe or outside Europe, at which point they throw you in a foreigner detention centre until you can prove your identity or they can deport you to wherever they think you might be from.
My experience driving through the EU is that barely anybody cares. You may be stopped at internal borders if your car plates don't match a Schengen-area country, but that's it.
You'll need your ID to stay in a hotel/AirBnB though. So unless you squat or camp illegally, better have it with you.
In fairness, part of the problem here is the US passport renewal system. I recently renewed my Irish passport. I was able to do it online with an uploaded picture, it was processed in less than a month despite COVID (usually it's a week), and then mailed to my US address.
If you have a life and death emergency you can still get a passport within 72 hours. Despite the phrasing this also includes things like a close family member getting injured. Aside from that yes you may need to wait. Note that the backlog is being worked through as shown in the data in section 3: https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/traveladvisories/....
This is just part of life in a global pandemic. Essential services will still happen but otherwise life and safety is the priority.
There's nothing about a pandemic that says that passport issuance/renewal must be closed down all year keeping Americans trapped in the U.S. Stop excusing low standards.
Not to mention even if we weren't in a pandemic the whole process of passport renewals is stupid and overly time-consuming. If my information is all the same, why can't I just upload my new passport photo online and have my new passport automatically printed and sent to me?
> There's nothing about a pandemic that says that passport issuance/renewal must be closed down all year keeping Americans trapped in the U.S. Stop excusing low standards.
Indoor workers face serious health risks if they have to go into the office and can't maintain social distancing. Do you really think someone should put their family's life at risk because you waited to the last minute to renew your passport and want to go on vacation?
Before you accuse others of low standards I would do a little introspection. The only person you have to blame for waiting until you were months away from expiration is yourself. You could have easily had it renewed while you lived abroad. My advice for when you have a task like a passport renewal that needs repeating once every 10 years: consider doing it before 97.5% of the time has elapsed.
Passports themselves aren't a problem. The problem is the bureaucracy around it.
Nobody can explain why it takes 3 months to do renewals. Why do they need the same documents from 10 years ago again? Don't you already have it saved somewhere that I am a citizen? Why do they need another ID from me again?
This is even worse for visas. Why do they need the same documents again and again and again?
It's an international standard with 196 countries. It's difficult to get 196 countries to agree on anything. There's now a chip in almost every passport, but the paper version provides great backwards compatibility for places where there is no Internet or the Internet is unreliable and they still need to control the border.
For other places, countries make bilateral agreements that eliminate the requirement for the book, such as the passport card and nexus.
Biometric only has a lot of annoying edge cases. What happens if you're severely burned and then need to cross a border? Biometrics aren't going to be able to identify you, but if you're in possession of a passport that hasn't been reported stolen, and eye color, height and weight all match, they'll let you through. Similarly, a passport issued to a newborn is not going to get a biometric match on a four year old kid, but if they possess the passport, eye color, and approximate age match, and they're traveling with their parents, they'll be let through. The possession of the document lends significant evidence that the traveller is who he/she says they are.
> 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). 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.
Most countries are not asking about nationality at their borders because they care about nationality, but because they care about other factors which correlate with nationality and are much harder to measure.
That is asserted often but I doubt the truth. Argentinia constitutionally considers migration a human right. They are a minority and not the most prosperous example of a country but they certainly aren't exceptionally worse off even if they wound up with the awkward combination of an overrepresentation of both infamously Nazi refugees and lesser known refugees fleeing from the Nazis historically.
Entry regulations are fine, every nation has the right to decide who they want to see on their land. However, being treated differently based not on your personality or track record, but on where you hail from is... I don't know, but seems to be somewhat similar to what the current protests are about.
I guess there is no solution to that. You are right that a member of a nation (or a community) where people often cause trouble mathematically more likely to break laws. I guess it would be unwise to use this to minimize the risk to your citizens.
That's kind of what Global Entry is. If you're willing to give up your privacy and have the gov't examine your profile as an individual, you can avoid be screened based on nationality alone.
I’m just saying that when you think about it, it feels weird — privileges literally depend on the “color” of one’s passport. Must be inherent to our civilization.
Because it's super-racist. Yes, what you say might be statistically true. However, in this specific case we're talking about 2 people that live and travel together, and have done so for years. They met while studying in the US.
Just because one of them is from Haiti doesn't fundamentally change the situation, they're each as likely to try and stay illegally as the other (which is not much).
The system is based on where you're from, but it really should be based on where you're going (in life in general, I mean).
Yes discrimination by nationality is statistically true but immoral but discrimination by economic circumstance is statistically true but moral. Self interest seep into your moral compass all the time or just when convenient?
I have a UK passport, one of the best in the world until recently. If I want to work in say the US as they are doing in Schengen it’s a massive pain.
Sure I can go for business meetings with an esta, but producing a TV program requires (from memory) a P visa
I remember some colleagues going to Nigeria to build a new office. They needed a work visa, which aside from the really high cost, required sending a TELEX!
I only went to interview some new hires, so that was allowed with a much easier business visa. Still a massive pain.
Another visa for a business trip (Pakistan) involved a 2 hour queue at a tent in Kensington and handing over private bank records.
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.
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.
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?
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.
47 comments
[ 3.9 ms ] story [ 104 ms ] thread"... 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."
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.)
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.
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.
Ok, I'm going to press X to doubt. Going by the US Visa bulletin(https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/legal/visa-law0/v...) the longest wait is 24 years for F3-class from Mexico. Obviously that isn't good but let's not pretend that it's anywhere near 50 years.
The poster is likely referring to employment 2nd and 3rd preference workers of Indian nationality. The visa bulletin has a current wait time of 11 years. However, that is saying that someone who entered the line 11 years ago will qualify today. In the last 11 years vastly more Indian nationals have entered the green card line than have been processed out of it. It's not 100% clear how long someone who enters the line today will have to wait, but 50 years is a reasonable guess given the numbers.
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.
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.
(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.)
Mine expired a few years ago, because I didn't bother to renew it being a EU citizen with no interest in travelling outside the Schengen area.
I think the restriction has been lifted since, but for a time I was confined to the borders of the EU.
Locals have been able to travel between the countries freely without a passport since 1954.
[1h] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nordic_Passport_Union
You'll need your ID to stay in a hotel/AirBnB though. So unless you squat or camp illegally, better have it with you.
This is just part of life in a global pandemic. Essential services will still happen but otherwise life and safety is the priority.
There's nothing about a pandemic that says that passport issuance/renewal must be closed down all year keeping Americans trapped in the U.S. Stop excusing low standards.
Not to mention even if we weren't in a pandemic the whole process of passport renewals is stupid and overly time-consuming. If my information is all the same, why can't I just upload my new passport photo online and have my new passport automatically printed and sent to me?
Indoor workers face serious health risks if they have to go into the office and can't maintain social distancing. Do you really think someone should put their family's life at risk because you waited to the last minute to renew your passport and want to go on vacation?
Before you accuse others of low standards I would do a little introspection. The only person you have to blame for waiting until you were months away from expiration is yourself. You could have easily had it renewed while you lived abroad. My advice for when you have a task like a passport renewal that needs repeating once every 10 years: consider doing it before 97.5% of the time has elapsed.
Nobody can explain why it takes 3 months to do renewals. Why do they need the same documents from 10 years ago again? Don't you already have it saved somewhere that I am a citizen? Why do they need another ID from me again?
This is even worse for visas. Why do they need the same documents again and again and again?
For other places, countries make bilateral agreements that eliminate the requirement for the book, such as the passport card and nexus.
Biometric only has a lot of annoying edge cases. What happens if you're severely burned and then need to cross a border? Biometrics aren't going to be able to identify you, but if you're in possession of a passport that hasn't been reported stolen, and eye color, height and weight all match, they'll let you through. Similarly, a passport issued to a newborn is not going to get a biometric match on a four year old kid, but if they possess the passport, eye color, and approximate age match, and they're traveling with their parents, they'll be let through. The possession of the document lends significant evidence that the traveller is who he/she says they are.
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). 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.
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?
So yeah, if you want to get rid of the very idea of countries, it could work...maybe.
I guess there is no solution to that. You are right that a member of a nation (or a community) where people often cause trouble mathematically more likely to break laws. I guess it would be unwise to use this to minimize the risk to your citizens.
That's kind of what Global Entry is. If you're willing to give up your privacy and have the gov't examine your profile as an individual, you can avoid be screened based on nationality alone.
I’m just saying that when you think about it, it feels weird — privileges literally depend on the “color” of one’s passport. Must be inherent to our civilization.
Just because one of them is from Haiti doesn't fundamentally change the situation, they're each as likely to try and stay illegally as the other (which is not much).
The system is based on where you're from, but it really should be based on where you're going (in life in general, I mean).
Sure I can go for business meetings with an esta, but producing a TV program requires (from memory) a P visa
I remember some colleagues going to Nigeria to build a new office. They needed a work visa, which aside from the really high cost, required sending a TELEX!
I only went to interview some new hires, so that was allowed with a much easier business visa. Still a massive pain.
Another visa for a business trip (Pakistan) involved a 2 hour queue at a tent in Kensington and handing over private bank records.
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.
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?
There are a few exceptions for Canadians not requiring a Canadian Passport. Namely: If you have a US Passport.