2021's Most Powerful Passports

[PeterRS]

Although covid has created travel difficulties for many, in an ideal world the Henley Passport Index which has been monitoring the most travel friendly passports since 2006 has announced its list for 2021. As before, Japan heads the list.

1. Japan (193 destinations)

2. Singapore (192)

3. Germany, South Korea (191)

4. Finland, Italy, Luxembourg, Spain (190)

5. Austria, Denmark (189)

6. France, Ireland, Netherlands, Portugal, Sweden (188)

7. Belgium, New Zealand, Switzerland, United Kingdom, United States (187)

8. Czech Republic, Greece, Malta, Norway (186)

9. Australia, Canada (185)

10. Hungary (184)

 

Henley & Partner's list is one of several indexes created by financial firms to rank global passports according to the access they provide to their citizens. The Henley Passport Index is based on data provided by the International Air Transport Authority (IATA) and covers 199 passports and 227 travel destinations. It is updated in real time throughout the year, as and when visa policy changes come into effect.

 

At the bottom fo the list is North Korea, but surprisingly to me it is accepted by 39 destinations. I wonder which ones.

 

https://edition.cnn.com/travel/article/henley-index-world-best-passport-2021/index.html

 

From 2022 UK citizens will require an ETIAS waiver before visiting EU countries (European Travel Information and Authorisation System). This is much easier to obtain than a visa, but presumably the UK will fall quite a few notches down the list next year.

[NIrishGuy]

What you mean that after BREXIT the UK passport isn't Number ONE in the world........why that would almost sound like Boris is on lying sod who lead people up a garden path on promises of glory that he hasn't yet been able to deliver on or something ! lol

 

* perhaps with the exception of buying vaccines early, where to be fair the UK does appear to have royally stuffed the EU, mind you as they screwed up their Covid handling so badly I think they needed to SOMETHING radical to offset that perhaps so it sort of all balances out in the end.

[reader]

I was wondering where China fit into the index. By checking the Henley & Partners website, I found that China shares 72nd place with Suriname and Namibia.

If you don't see your country you can find it here at

https://www.henleyglobal.com/passport-index/ranking

[spoon]

I thought thailand is higher up in their rank. Seems like they are not far from china, indonesia and philippines

[vinapu]

17 hours ago, PeterRS said:

 

 

At the bottom of the list is North Korea, but surprisingly to me it is accepted by 39 destinations. I wonder which ones.

 

 

go there, Cambodia , Laos and Nepal among them

https://www.henleyglobal.com/passport-index/compare

[PeterRS]

14 hours ago, spoon said:

I thought thailand is higher up in their rank. Seems like they are not far from china, indonesia and philippines

I think (not sure) position on the rankings is partly due to reciprocal agreements between countries. I suspect quite a lot of western and other countries have concerns about young Thais wanting to remain beyond the length of their visas - especially possible bar girls and others working in the sex business.

[spoon]

Reciprocity definitely a factor for visa. Malaysia is ranked 13th, Brunei at 21st. But yeah, i guess thailand reputation of wanting to marry a westerners kept them at the middle rank. But what suprised me is their rank is not far from indonesia and phillipines which i thought fare worse than thailand. When i toy the idea to bring a boy to travel with me, one country in particular allows thai to go there visa free but not indonesian.

[Guest]

I suspect the probability of citizens going home at the end of their stay is the major factor in the rankings.

If people come from a wealthy country with effective law and order at home, they will be more likely to return home at the end of the trip.   Particularly if they have a good job or good career prospects, which would no longer be the case if they became an illegal immigrant in another country.

Meanwhile, at the bottom of the list, we have countries like Afghanistan, Yemen, Iraq, Syria & Yemen.   Now if prospects back home are grim, those people are more likely to either claim asylum or stay illegally.   The voters do not want that.

Even further up the list, people from Vietnam were attempting to smuggle themselves into the UK in the back of a truck a couple of years ago.   It the UK made it easy to get visas, the ones intending to try illegal immigration would simply get a visa, fly here, then abscond.   

I'm not suggesting that if visas were handed out to Vietnamese, they would all try illegal immigration.  It's just the percentage overstaying would be much higher than from, somewhere like Singapore, which I imagine would be very close to zero.  

For most of us, I suspect the rankings are just for interest.   It's not like we can easily gather more passports than Jason Bourne, although those with overseas relatives or several million in the bank might try for a second passport just as a backup plan.  

So what really matters is whether or not we can get into the countries we want to visit, on reasonable terms.  In most cases, that is the case.  

Exceptions include high visa fees for China and India, however I believe that is purely reciprocal pricing for UK citizens, so I cannot complain.   The visa fees don't stop me, but have caused deferral of visits to China, as if I pay nearly £200 for a visa, I want to stay for nearer a month than a week.  This has to fit around other plans.

[NIrishGuy]

7 hours ago, PeterRS said:

I suspect quite a lot of western and other countries have concerns about young Thais wanting to remain beyond the length of their visas - especially possible bar girls and others working in the sex business.

See is it only me who thinks that of ALL the people we DO let into the UK  - that bar boys and sex workers should be the ones we are actively ENCOURAGING to come stay only yearly visas !  There should be extra points given to them on their visa applications just as we do with brain surgeons and engineers and the like, with bar boys being classed as "essential workers" ( as they are for some of us at least ! :-)

 

[spoon]

16 minutes ago, NIrishGuy said:

See is it only me who thinks that of ALL the people we DO let into the UK  - that bar boys and sex workers should be the ones we are actively ENCOURAGING to come stay only yearly visas !  There should be extra points given to them on their visa applications just as we do with brain surgeons and engineers and the like, with bar boys being classed as "essential workers" ( as they are for some of us at least ! :-)

 

If u ever run as politician in my country, you get my vote! Lol

[reader]

3 hours ago, z909 said:

Even further up the list, people from Vietnam were attempting to smuggle themselves into the UK in the back of a truck a couple of years ago.   It the UK made it easy to get visas, the ones intending to try illegal immigration would simply get a visa, fly here, then abscond.  

It's worth reminding readers that the 39 Vietnamese who were suffocated to death in the refrigerated lorry in 2019 were not smuggling themselves into England. They were smuggled in by others.

All of those convicted of manslaughter or smuggling them into the UK were citizens of the UK, Ireland or Italy.

These are the faces of those young people who suffered the agonizing death. R.I.P.

[PeterRS]

3 hours ago, z909 said:

Even further up the list, people from Vietnam were attempting to smuggle themselves into the UK in the back of a truck a couple of years ago.   It the UK made it easy to get visas, the ones intending to try illegal immigration would simply get a visa, fly here, then abscond.   

I'm not suggesting that if visas were handed out to Vietnamese, they would all try illegal immigration.  It's just the percentage overstaying would be much higher than from, somewhere like Singapore, which I imagine would be very close to zero.

This was a ghastly tragedy.

38 minutes ago, reader said:

It's worth reminding readers that the 39 Vietnamese who were suffocated to death in the refrigerated lorry in 2019 were not smuggling themselves into England. All of those convicted of manslaughter or smuggling them into the UK were citizens of the UK, Ireland or Italy.

Sorry Reader, but of course their objective whilst in that truck was precisely to smuggle themselves into the UK. Their families had all paid snakeheads in Vietnam  vast sums for the precise purpose of smuggling them on a long and extremely hazardous journey to Europe. For those who make it, they often end up working for slave wages always in fear they will be discovered and deported back. But those earnigs are more than they can make in Vietnam and they can send money back home to give their families a better life.

"As dangerous as the last leg of the migrant journey to Britain often is, those petrifying hours in a trailer are sometimes only a sliver of months if not years of harsh treatment — first at the hands of organized trafficking gangs, and then under imperious bosses at nail salons and cannabis factories in Britain. But still they come, an estimated 18,000 Vietnamese paying smugglers for the journey to Europe every year at prices between 8,000 and 40,000 pounds, around $10,000 to $50,000.

"In Britain, where Brexit has discouraged the flow of labor from Eastern Europe, migrants see a country thirsty for low-wage workers, paying easily five times what they could earn at home and free of the onerous identity checks that make other European countries inhospitable.

"Vietnamese smugglers, for the most part, get their clients across to France and the Netherlands, where other gangs, often Kurdish and Albanian, or, as in the recent case, apparently Irish or Northern Irish, finish the job."

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/01/world/europe/vietnamese-migrants-europe.html

[vinapu]

3 hours ago, z909 said:

 

Exceptions include high visa fees for China and India, however I believe that is purely reciprocal pricing for UK citizens, so I cannot complain.   

a lot of us may not even be aware about particularly assholish practice of some Western countries when comes to visas - visa fee , often equivalent of 100 or 200 $ , princely sum in many countries,  is demanded up front and is NOT REFUNDED in case visa is denied

[reader]

Turning victims into criminals is a classic and regrettable way of redirecting blame. It may assuage the conscience of those who wish to deflect attention from the fact that the act would not have been even possible without the direct overt acts of the true criminals who were found guilty in this matter.

There are many ways to belittle and disparage those very same people we hope to meet in our travels.

9 hours ago, PeterRS said:

I suspect quite a lot of western and other countries have concerns about young Thais wanting to remain beyond the length of their visas - especially possible bar girls and others working in the sex business.

In other words they're good enough to satisfy our desires while were in country but perish the thought that we should permit them into our home nations.

Employing double standards that meets our needs in one set of conditions but we find distasteful in others seems remarkably convenient. In this case, it precludes the possibility that young Thais may indeed have aspirations other than a career in the sex business.

 

[vinapu]

13 minutes ago, PeterRS said:

But those earnigs are more than they can make in Vietnam and they can send money back home to give their families a better life.

 

You hit the nail ! Paltry sum in Western countries often goes very long way in may poor ones ,  slave wages here  mushroom when crossing borders and deplorable living conditions are still often much better than ones at home.

Authentic discussion from my then workplace about 30 years ago: one employee got lucky and won a little bit in lottery, our boss congratulating  him mused casually that this is what he paid for  suit for his son recent wedding. Employee answered " I'm more rich than you, I will built new barn for that when I get home" .

World is very complex place

[PeterRS]

2 hours ago, reader said:

Turning victims into criminals is a classic and regrettable way of redirecting blame. It may assuage the conscience of those who wish to deflect attention from the fact that the act would not have been even possible without the direct overt acts of the true criminals who were found guilty in this matter.

I'm sorry but here I have to disagree again. Who were the true criminals? The snakeheads in Vietnam, surely. Without them those poor young people who were murdered - for that is how I see their deaths - would still be in their Vietnamese villages. Those who were found guilty in the UK were merely the poor bastards at the end of a very long trail of criminals. I do not in the slightest defend their actions, but without the originating criminals in so many countries, the drivers of the lorries would not have human cargo to transport. That is not redirecting blame. It is merely apportioning it in the correct way.

[Guest]

1 hour ago, PeterRS said:

I'm sorry but here I have to disagree again. Who were the true criminals? The snakeheads in Vietnam, surely.

1  The worst criminals are the traffickers.    However, in the case of the Vietnamese, it must be remembered that they willingly paid to come to the UK.

2  For certain countries, illegally entering the country is a criminal offence.  Whether Reader, PeterRS, I or anyone else on the board like it or not.    To discuss which countries would be well off topic.

3  Once illegal immigrants are here, life will not be as pleasant as they expect.     Without a national insurance number, they will not be employed by any reputable employer. They will not be able to rent accommodation of any reputable landlord, since the landlord is required to check passports to ensure they are legally in the country and can be heavily fined for providing accommodation to illegal immigrants.

4   Whilst some of us would like a lenient immigration policy that allows cute young lads from Thailand, Laos etc to come to the UK, in reality this type of discrimination by nationality would not be politically correct.    So we cannot have an exception for certain nationalities.  Then as a densely populated country, the UK must have some controls on immigration.   Even less densely populated countries like the USA and Canada have immigration controls, so we are not alone.    

All of these 4 points are of course, off topic.   

Getting back to the topic, the Vietnamese case showed there is demand for people to pay thousands of pounds to be smuggled into the UK. 

If the people choosing that option could instead spend a couple of hundred pounds on a visa, then just fly here and abscond, that's what they would do.  

Even if only a few percent, it would be a problem.     Hence we do not easily give out visas to Vietnamese citizens.     Life can be tough, but that is how it is.  

So there we have the Henley Passport Index. 

[reader]

3 hours ago, PeterRS said:

I'm sorry but here I have to disagree again. Who were the true criminals? The snakeheads in Vietnam, surely. Without them those poor young people who were murdered - for that is how I see their deaths - would still be in their Vietnamese villages. Those who were found guilty in the UK were merely the poor bastards at the end of a very long trail of criminals.

It's not disputed that the traffickers in Vietnam set this in motion. Those convicted in the UK, however, were much more than just unfortunate middle men in the taking of 39 lives. For most of them, this was not the first time they had smuggled people into the UK. It was the first time they were caught. Without their direct actions, the 39 would not have died. That's the way I see of apportioning the blame correctly.

1 hour ago, z909 said:

However, in the case of the Vietnamese, it must be remembered that they willingly paid to come to the UK.

They didn't willingly agree to be killed. You're content portray them as collateral damage, not victims.

1 hour ago, z909 said:

To discuss which countries would be well off topic.

You forget that it was you who first took the tread off topic when you said: "Even further up the list, people from Vietnam were attempting to smuggle themselves into the UK in the back of a truck a couple of years ago.   It the UK made it easy to get visas, the ones intending to try illegal immigration would simply get a visa, fly here, then abscond."  

You cavalierly made light of it, crediting the state for not making it easier for those Vietnamese to arrive. Somehow I don't think it was at all that easy to slowly suffocate. But that's just me.

Then you proceed with a litany of reasons that should serve to discourage others.

1 hour ago, z909 said:

Whilst some of us would like a lenient immigration policy that allows cute young lads from Thailand, Laos etc to come to the UK, in reality this type of discrimination by nationality would not be politically correct.

Again, you go out of your way to make light of the incident, referring to "cute young lads" and the political correctness of it all. You fail to acknowledge the tragedy that befell them, opting instead to down play it.

Go back and take a look at those 39 faces. Those were fellow human beings robbed of their lives at an early age.  We are no better than any one of them. We are the fortunate who, by accident of birth of happenstance, were born into a country where we became better educated, acquired good-paying jobs and maybe some semblance of wealth. None of that gives us the right to look down on anyone of these young people who wish for the same things.

These are the people who enter our countries--legally or otherwise--and harvest our produce, toil in our food processing factories and do physical labor our own citizens prefer not to. They deserve to be acknowledged for their contribution which is typically rewarded with low pay and few if any benefits.

[PeterRS]

9 hours ago, reader said:

They didn't willingly agree to be killed. You're content portray them as collateral damage, not victims.

This thread is all getting rather ridiculous. We all agree that the chain of tragic links started with snakeheads in Vietnam. Criminals were involved all along the way with the final group being the ones who ferried them in sealed container lorries. Everyone was guilty of something, including the victims who knew precisely what they were doing and very sadly paid the ultimate price.

The fact is if we look around the world, citizens of many countries, especially in Africa and Central and South America, many of whom live in miserable conditions, are desperate for a better life. They see gold at the end of a criminal highway in countries which are usually near the top of the passport list. In most cases, those who help them are criminals in one way or another. Let's just leave it at that.

[vinapu]

10 minutes ago, PeterRS said:

 In most cases, those who help them are criminals in one way or another.

for those who successfully made it those criminals are God sent since they can't count on visa obtained legal way. Labels sometimes are not what they are meant to be.

[10tazione]

3 hours ago, PeterRS said:

including the victims who knew precisely what they were doing

I don't believe this.

[PeterRS]

1 hour ago, 10tazione said:

I don't believe this.

Whyever not? At the Vietnamese end, everyone knew what they were doing was illegal. When a return air ticket to the UK would have cost not more than around $800, you believe those poor victims and their families did not know they were being smuggled illegally? Of course they knew. That is why they were prepared to pay the Vietnamese snakeheads huge sums "between $10,000 and $40,000".  Who pays that kind of money to travel legally? As the judge said in his summing up -

"Justice Sweeney added: 'The willingness of the victims to try and enter the country illegally provides no excuse for what happened to them.'" 

Here is an explanation from the Vietnamese end by an anti-slavery expert based there.

"Mimi Vu, an independent anti-trafficking and slavery expert based in Vietnam, said the smuggling of people from Vietnam to the UK continued in the months after the tragedy. 'The prices just went up,' she said, basing her observations on interviews conducted with Vietnamese migrants in northern France earlier this year. 'It didn’t dampen people’s enthusiasm for leaving. People tended to view this as an anomaly. They saw the people who died as just very unlucky. Smugglers’ marketing tactics changed and they told people they needed to pay more to guarantee the safest passage.'

"She had little expectation that the trial would do much to stem the continued smuggling of large numbers of people from Vietnam to the UK. 'It’s like cutting off a fingernail, when to really address the problem we need to cut off the heads, which are sitting in Prague, Berlin, Moscow, and other European cities where the ethnic Vietnamese organised crime groups that direct the smuggling and trafficking trade are based,' she said."

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-essex-55765213

https://www.theguardian.com/law/2020/dec/21/essex-lorry-deaths-vietnamese-trafficking-victims-died-uk-has-anything-changed

[reader]

8 hours ago, PeterRS said:

Everyone was guilty of something, including the victims who knew precisely what they were doing and very sadly paid the ultimate price.

To believe that the victims suspected that they could end up dead as they reached their destination is a ridiculous assumption. That they paid traffickers to take them on a fatal mission is preposterous.

You think you know what was in their minds? Read the transcripts of the cell phone messages left for their loved ones. Somehow they just don't sounds like scheming criminals to me.

No one is against prosecuting all those connected with the the incident. You can't, however, prosecute the victims any more than they already have been. To try to do so here after they are no longer with us is particularly cruel.

This discussion started with the false claim that they tried to "smuggle themselves" into the the UK. They didn't choose their manner of passport or agree to be locked in a sealed refrigerator from which they would never escape alive.

Attempts to demonstrate their complicity in their own deaths only succeed in defiling their memory. Their bodies are now beyond further injury.

 

[PeterRS]

52 minutes ago, reader said:

To believe that the victims suspected that they could end up dead as they reached their destination is a ridiculous assumption. That they paid traffickers to take them on a fatal mission is preposterous.

You think you know what was in their minds? Read the transcripts of the cell phone messages left for their loved ones. Somehow they just don't sounds like scheming criminals to me.

No one is against prosecuting all those connected with the the incident. You can't, however, prosecute the victims any more than they already have been. To try to do so here after they are no longer with us is particularly cruel.

This discussion started with the false claim that they tried to "smuggle themselves" into the the UK. They didn't choose their manner of passport or agree to be locked in a sealed refrigerator from which they would never escape alive.

Attempts to demonstrate their complicity in their own deaths only succeed in defiling their memory. Their bodies are now beyond further injury.

Now, just a moment! Where did I say all of that? Fact is I did not! I did say the victims were guilty precisely because they knew they were being smuggled into England. Of course they didn't manage to "choose their manner of passport", as you rather pointlessly say, for the very simple reason there was no possibility any of them could get a UK passport! They and their families knew they were not going legally. They and their families knew the risks involved. They also knew from previous smuggled persons that there was a chance they would end up in a bad way - perhaps in parts of Europe being basically slaves in factories or worse, and then even dead. After all, others before them had died. They WERE complicit in that they knew they were trying to get to the UK illegally.

Would anyone in their right mind expect to pay up to $40,000 to get into the UK legally? Of course not, and they knew it. Didn't you read Mimi Vu's comment in my earlier post? Did you read the judge's point made in his summation re the illegality of their actions?

This from abc news -about the illegal routes from Vietnam to the UK.

"The so-called VIP route costs more -- ranging from $10,000 to $50,000 -- but is supposedly safer and takes less time to complete. VIP route migrants often go to China where they pick up recycled passports from traffickers before flying to Russia and then into Western Europe. But they will only be able to get so far as France or Belgium, despite assurances from traffickers, according to the 2019 research project by Anti-Slavery International, Every Child Protected Against Trafficking and Pacific Links Foundation."

These would be the actions of those who KNEW they were travelling legally? No one can believe that.

I was desperately sad when I read the fate of these poor Vietnamese young people. I have fiends in Vietnam and we had quite a few conversations about it. But to suggest the dead assumed they were taking a legal route in the UK is, frankly, pie in the sky!  If you knowingly break the law, you are guilty. When breaking the law, ignorance of that law is also no excuse - and I thought you might actually know that.

https://abcnews.go.com/International/6000-mile-journey-scores-vietnamese-migrants-smuggled-trafficked/story?id=67318722

[reader]

19 minutes ago, PeterRS said:

If you knowingly break the law, you are guilty. When breaking the law, ignorance of that law is also no excuse - and I thought you might actually know that.

Hard to believe, but you are making it abundantly clear that your prime objective is to show that the dead are guilty. Prepare yourself for a shock: as much as you wish to, you cannot prosecute the deceased.

And I thought you might actually know that.