Passports

My passport will expire in 9 months.  It's not a problem for me now, but by the end of the year I will have to renew....if I can remember to do so. The only reason I know about the expiration date of my passport is because I read a newspaper story about passport fraud. We don't often think about our passports.  But that article reminded me to see if my passport is near to the date it will expire. My guess on expiration (in 2016) was correct.  I guess a great number of people forget to renew their passport before expiration. And there are those who renew theirs in time but who can't use it because some nations require that a passport must be valid for at least 3- 6 months before entrance is allowed into their country.

The whole subject of passports is complicated and too involved for me. There are passports that counterfeited, passport mistakes that doom one to sit in an airport rather than board an airplane, there's the passport picture of a person that doesn't match his or her appearance because of that 30 kilo weight gain since the last issuance of the passport. It goes on and on. many years ago while in a communist country my passport was taken from me by the police there (International law says that in most nations a passport and the passport user must never be separated from each other when the foreigner has his passport checked by the country's police).  Did you know that some small Pacific island nations, in order to raise money, sell anyone one of their passports? And what about the value of a passport? Are all passports equal in value?

No! That short answer is because passports are rated as more powerful if they allow the traveler to go to more countries without also obtaining a visa for travel in the visited country. Nations have travel arrangement/treaties that allow visa wavers. The three nations that have the most powerful passports allow their citizens to travel to 173 nations, visa free. Those three are Finland, Sweden and the United Kingdom. The U.S. is next with 72 visa free travel destinations. A nation like North Korea doesn't allow any travel outside itself, which makes passports irrelevant there. But among those nations that do allow foreign travel, the following (unpleasant and dictatorial) nations have the least powerful passports; Afghanistan, Iran, Somalia, Pakistan, and Nepal.  The worst nations make their citizens spiritual as well as physical prisons.

Every nation issues different types of passports. The Diplomat passport, for example, bestows special privileges to the user that you, me and other peasants of the world won't get. We get the "tourist" or "ordinary" passport, because....well....we are ordinary  One passport type you never want to have to obtain is the emergency passport, issued when you stupidly lose your passport or have yours stolen.

In general, passport holders in North America and Europe have the most freedom of travel, while passport holders in Africa, the Middle East and South Asia have the least. This proves the "life is not fair" proposition all humans learn at some early point in life. On that note, I suggest you check to see if you can find your passport and whether or not it is still valid. Happy traveling to you!