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This illustrates the advantage that citizens of wealthy countries have over other countries and hopefully helps people to not take a 'good passport' for granted. But whether you can get into 176 or 173 or whatever countries is not really a significant issue and it changes all the time anyway. There is very little difference between the top few dozen countries in terms of the number of countries that will allow visa free travel to them.
I've done all kinds of business travel over the years where I needed visas. What's the big deal? Well, I guess if you live in flyover country where you can't drive to the consulate to get the stamp or stick-on page in your passport, it means a FEDEX envelope. In most countries that require them, you can buy the tourist visa at the airport after you land. I've queued up and forked over cash quite a few times over the years.
There was a 60 Minutes segment back on January 1st of this year talking about how "easy" it was to buy citizenship in other small, poor countries, if you have the money:
I think they did an update months after the original segment aired, talking about how the countries featured in their story are going to change their ways and make it harder to "buy" citizenship.
A US passport was once the most powerful passport. I never needed a visa to visit anywhere. Recently, that has changed.
There have always been countries that you needed a vista to visit with an American passport, that is not a change.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Nn2036
US citizens is also paying through the nose for evisa due to reciprocity.
For example, for Australia, ETA is $20 for USA. EU can have evisitor and it is free.
$20 is paying through the nose? I might pay $1,200 for a round trip flight and could drop $20 on two beers in Australia, but I need to be concerned about the $20 ETA fee because that crosses the line into "paying through the nose" territory.
A US passport was once the most powerful passport. I never needed a visa to visit anywhere. Recently, that has changed.
Now I would agree that Germany is probably the most powerful visa.
I traveled in the 1970s and 80s to Russia, China, Eastern Europe, Australia, Iran, South America, etc. I needed a visa for all of them and I have a US passport. When and where were you traveling and didn't need them?
A visa for Brazil will cost you more than $200 with fees. I was in Argentina, Uruguay, and Chile, earlier this year. Skipped Brazil because of the visa hassle. If I could have paid upon arrival we would have gone. They lost out on the money we would have spent there.
Several people mentioned reciprocity. The difference is, Brazilians come here on tourist visas and never go home. I doubt that the reverse is true.
Last edited by Futuremauian; 09-18-2017 at 07:20 PM..
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