This is my passport.
As you can see, it is a passport from the United States, the one and only country of
which I am a citizen.
It’s a cool little booklet, featuring iconic scenes and quotes from American history, but
there’s an even cooler feature: it grants me access into other countries.
These blue books are valid entry and exit ID everywhere in the world except North Korea,
because they had to be that way, but how exactly does it work?
Well, a passport is effectively just a form of ID, but one that other countries also recognize,
and can stamp upon entry, and sometimes also upon exit.
Passports are effectively representations of your nationality, basically a way to prove
you are who you say you are.
Now, before we get into all the fun, little details about different passports around the
world, let’s talk about some basic passport protocol.
You know, just some stuff you need to know about your passport (at least your US passport)
and what you can/cannot/should do.
Your passport is admitted to you by your government, and is exclusively property of the government.
It does not truly belong to you, it’s just a document your government grants you to prove
who you are and what country you come from to foreign (and local) border control.
In fact, the first page of the US passport (which is not the ID page, for some reason)
states, “The Secretary of State of the United States of America hereby requests all whom
it may concern to permit the citizen/national of the United States named herein to pass
without delay or hindrance and in case of need to give all lawful aid and protection”.
Basically, it’s the US government saying “we’ve got your back, bro”.
Now, a few things for you to keep in mind.
First, as US government property, you are of course required to surrender your passport
if asked to do so by a US government representative, or to a border control or police officer from
any country.
However, altering or mutilating your passport, or carrying someone else’s passport, or
altering or mutilating someone else’s passport are all strictly forbidden, like, you’re-actually-probably-going-to-jail
forbidden.
The only people who are allowed to make any alterations in your passport are, of course,
border officials.
Like, the people in the airport who flip over to a certain page and put a stamp there.
Okay, now onto the fun stuff.
Of course, as we all know from a previous, award-winning video of mine, not all passports
are created equal.
Different countries’ passports grant their holders different visa restrictions.
For example, Mexico’s border control requires everyone entering on a Kuwaiti passport to
have a visa issued to them by the Mexican embassy in their area, whereas American passport
holders can essentially just show up to the border.
However, this is of course the exact opposite from how it’s done in Saudi Arabia.
Interestingly, most Americans don’t actually possess a passport of their own, and many
never have at all.
For many Americans, a passport simply isn’t necessary, since it’s something we literally
only need if we want to travel to another country, and we all know how often Americans
do that.
However, things are different in some other countries.
In Russia, for example, Russian citizens often have two different types of passports, one
for external travel (basically a normal passport) and something called an internal passport.
The internal passport is a document required for all Russian citizens above the age of
14, and is used as documentation for travel around Russia, usually when boarding trains.
It’s not just Russia’s internal passport system, either, most countries around the
world grant some certain citizens differing types of passports.
For the US passport (just to keep everything simple) there is more than just the regular
passport, like what I have.
Some notable examples also include the gray-covered service passport, for anyone doing work abroad
to support the US government; the maroon-colored official passport, largely used by politicians
and military personnel serving abroad; the black-covered diplomatic passport, for high-ranking
politicians and… diplomats; and of course the emergency passport, just in case you’re
stuck abroad and need to get a passport quickly.
As you may have guessed, diplomatic and service passports also often have different visa requirements
than regular passports, as diplomats and government workers will have different protections and
priorities for the host country than regular tourists.
In the olden days, passports were just little booklets with ID info and a bunch of pages
to stamp, but most countries around the world in recent years have been shying away from
this for biometric passports, which you can identify with this little, rectangular logo
with the circle thing in it.
Nowadays these passports are often issued exclusively instead of their non-biometric
counterparts, as many countries are starting to require travellers to enter with biometric
passports.
Biometric passports are just like regular passports, but with a special microchip inside,
which saves data about the user’s biometric info, which helps with things like facial
recognition (for automatic passport checks), fingerprint info, and even iris scan info.
Finally, onto the fun cultural stuff.
Since passports are essentially little booklets displaying your nationality, it’s perhaps
no surprise that many countries take the chance to put many different national symbols and
features on their passport covers.
Some notable examples include Germany’s Bundesadler, Brazil’s southern cross, and
Iran’s right-side opening.
Many countries will also put mentions to any major organizations they’re part of, like
Antigua and Barbuda with CariCom, or Germany in the European Union.
The color of the passport covers also play a surprising role in this, as well.
Though there are varying shades, there are only four passport color groups in the world:
blues, reds, greens and blacks.
Red passports are often sported by current and former Communist countries and countries
in the Andean community in South America, however the EU has adopted a pan-EU burgundy
shade, which every member (except Croatia) has adopted.
Even some non-EU member nations, like Turkey and Serbia, have adopted this color in their
passports because of, well…
Of course, with breakfast [Brexit] due to take effect in the end of March, there has
even been talk to change the British passport from its current shade of EU-red to its old
shade of blue, matching with those of the US, Canada and Australia, which will be made
in France.
Wait, but what about New Zealand?
Well, anyone who knows anything about New Zealand (or at least knows how to say “kia
ora”) knows that New Zealand’s national color is black [insert All Blacks reference],
and so their passports are of course the same color.
Thank you as always for watching, and if you are interested in travelling to other countries,
while also supporting the channel, then be sure to visit the affiliate links I have put
in the description of this video for ivisa.com, a website that makes getting travel visas
hilariously quick and easy, so be sure to check them out.
Other than that, be sure to like and subscribe to learn something new every Sunday.