What makes Japan, Singapore, South Korea passports stronger than other passports?
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Passports don’t automatically allow entry into a country. Some countries don’t allow people with passports issued from other countries to freely enter without first securing a visa. A passport’s ‘strength’ is therefore the amount of other countries it can enable a holder to visit without needing a visa.
Passport strength generally refers to how many countries the passport holder is able to enter without a visa. So basically with those passports you can travel to most other countries without needing to apply for specific permission.
Because they give easier access to many countries without needing a visa this is often because their countries have strong economies, low corruption, and good diplomatic relationships. Basically they’re trusted and welcomed everywhere, making their passports very powerful
Depending on where you’re from and where you’re going, the destination country often asks for you to be screened to be able to enter their country. As a result of that screening, you get a visa on your passport, which shows that you’re allowed to enter that country for a certain amount of time/certain amount of entries/other restrictions.
Depending on where you’re from, other countries might trust you more (or less) or your country might have a deal with other countries to mutually trust each other. In that case, you don’t need a visa to enter their country.
People holding those passports don’t need visa to more countries than holders of other passports.
In order to enter a country you need permission from the country you are going to. A country have different rules for citizens of different countries. For example a Canadian can pretty much just go through the US boarder without any issues, unless they are staying for long or working. But a Mexican needs to apply for a visa and go through some paperwork before they can get through the boarder. And someone from Russia or Iran might not get through without an exception from the state department.
People have compiled lists for each country what other countries you can enter and how easy it is. You can further compare these lists to each other to get a ranking. Depending on how you rank these passports different countries end up on top. So you can not really take these rankings all too seriously.
Passport “strength” is a pretty nonsense metric except from nations with strong restriction on their people’s travel, like say if you’re on an Afghan passport.
When you see these listicles they are basically just gibberish clickbait farm postings. Don’t pay any attention to them. There really isn’t “strongest” passports. What they measure is mostly nonsense that almost all passports from most developed nations are about the same
It’s the bottom of the list that is important, not the top, but those countries don’t make headlines and don’t have high value consumers surfing the internet looking at articles in English.
Lol we just had a bunch of contractors from SK get their visas cut up upon entering the US. Not sure the reasoning, but ironic if the common thought is that their documentation is ‘stronger’
Japan, Singapore, and South Korea have “strong” passports because they enable holders to travel to numerous countries either visa-free or with a visa on arrival,
Most countries don’t want more poverty stricken people coming to their country.
They want educated people from developed countries.
That’s all it is.
Strength of passports is based on what hoops holders need to go through to enter other countries, eg. applying for visas in advance of travel. The countries where citizens/passport holders that can just hop on a plane and land somewhere and enter in the most foreign destinations are the strongest.
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