why US passport (and possibly others) mention which state or country passport holder was born in? Who needs that information?
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After reading your question, I just checked mine -also US- and while it does indeed state the state, it doesn’t state the city of birth, which is odd.
Because it’s a standardized form all countries that accepted the ICAO machine readable specifications (DOC9303) agreed to. It helps with identification presumably.
Its biodata to make it easy to identify you as an individual. Many people share your name, some your date of birth, and some your place of birth, but all three is very rare.
It’s additional identification, that’s all.
The application in the US includes that question near the top. I mistakenly put the state I live in, and didn’t realize it until the passport arrived.
I got it fixed immediately. Customs agents are what American cops want to be. The last thing I need is to get pinned down because I answer that question wrong.
It’s basically just for identification purposes. If you lose your passport or it gets stolen, having your place of birth on there can help verify your identity. Plus, some countries have specific entry requirements based on where you were born. So it’s just another way to confirm who you are and where you’re from.
There are some countries where you can essentially “buy” citizenship with an investment. Country A may allow Country B visa-free entry, but only if they are born there. I have heard of countries denying entry to, say someone born in Iraq, who bought citizenship in a Caribbean island nation, even if they normally allow those citizens entry.
As others have stated, it helps identify the person in question, but also it’s possible for someone to be born in a country that they do not have citizenship in, and having that they were born somewhere in that country which means that there is no reason to be suspicious about a 5 year old who appears to have spontaneously appeared in a foreign country as far as their passport is concerned.
If X country contacts the US and says ‘We have arrested John Smith’, your birth state makes it infinitely easier to track down which John Smith we’re talking about
To add to what everyone else is saying, some people become naturalized citizens who were born in other countries. They don’t get a special different kind of passport, but that field allows them to specify they were born in a different country so it doesn’t raise any eyebrows that they have a US passport but a foreign accent.
disambiguation information. in early times you had one name, ie john then they added paulson, ie son of paul, or baker, or carpenter, the city/state on your passport helps disambiguate two similar names.
the wikipedia has a disambiguation type of landing page, an example:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carpenter_(disambiguation)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carpenter_(disambiguation))
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