EDIT: Learned that many countries are required to have a Visa before entering. They cannot travel to the US, even for tourism, without it. As a privileged American citizen, I naively thought anyone can travel anywhere for tourism purposes with just a passport.
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Re your edit.
Don’t feel bad. How would you know all the international travel laws?
Since there has historically been a lot of conflict between nations the default is for borders to be closed.
Countries can negotiate travel agreements. When countries are particularly friendly with each other, movement restrictions get loosened.
At one extreme countries may ban travel to or from certain other countries.
When they get a little friendlier they start to allow temporary permits (either for business or tourism).
Even friendlier countries might make it easier to obtain citizenship or waive visa requirements all together.
The EU goes a step farther. EU citizens can travel freely between EU nations and stay to work as long as they like.
The US goes even farther than that. The separate “states” are so united that we did away with the concept of citizenship between states. You just have residency and you can change it any time you like by just spending more time in one state than an other.
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