Passports: An abuse of human rights and common decency

* Passports: An abuse of human rights and common decency,

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Where Are Your Papers?

by Wendy McElroy

“Your papers!” In old movies, the demand is barked at trembling 

travelers by a Nazi with a guttural accent. If the demand is made in 

the opening scene, then the audience knows immediately that they 

watching a totalitarian state in which travelers are in danger.

“Your papers!” now rings out at every American airport and border 

crossing. The accent is different but travelers need to recognize 

with equal immediacy that a totalitarian state is playing out in 

front of their eyes, and they must be careful.

A passport is where the security theater begins. Indeed, without a 

passport those who wish to fly or cross a border are not “allowed” 

to be scanned, searched, interrogated, or undergo a plethora of 

other indignities imposed by uniformed thugs. The hoops through 

which passport carriers jump are all prelude to “permitting” them to 

exercise a right belonging to every freeborn person: the right to 

travel.

Things were not always this way. It is important to remember that 

there once was a world in which people traveled freely across 

borders without paperwork to visit families, pursue education, 

conduct business, and mingle. Freedom worked once. It enriched the 

world economically, culturally, and psychologically.

European nations pioneered many if not most aspects of the modern 

passport. The passport as an official permission or protection, and 

not merely as identification, arose because of armed conflicts. In 

the 17th century, sea voyaging was key to trade, travel, and the 

maintenance of empire. With some frequency, war interrupted that 

flow. Therefore, neutral vessels were granted passports or “sea 

letters” from a port of departure, which permitted them to journey 

in safety.

By the mid-19th century, mandatory passports had largely disappeared 

from Europe and Asia, with Czarist Russia and the Ottoman Empire 

being prominent exceptions. The change was largely due to three 

factors. First, governments were pressured to open up borders so 

that goods and services could flow across an increasingly 

industrialized Europe. Second, the period between the last 

Napoleonic War (1815) and World War I was unusually peaceful. Third, 

railroads now dominated travel. Their speed and the sheer number of 

travelers made traditional methods of checking documents 

impractical. 

Thus, with trade and peace, mandatory passports declined. 

War brought them back to life. With World War I, European nations 

once more imposed requirements not only to identify “enemies of the 

state” (e.g., spies or the citizens of belligerents) but also to 

control the outward flow of skilled labor in order to maintain their 

own workforces. In short, passports once again became social 

controls and, like the United States, many European nations 

maintained their requirements after the War. 

World War II made passports mandatory on a virtually worldwide 

basis. Although passport requirements loosened once more after the 

WWII, the war on terror in the wake of 9/11 has raised those 

requirements to unprecedented levels. The ebb and flow of passports 

is that of war itself.

The American passport was also rooted in war, specifically the 

American Revolution (1775-1783). The first one was issued in 1783; 

based on the French “passport,” it was designed and printed by 

Benjamin Franklin. It was a single page with a description of the 

bearer(s) and his or their signature(s). For example, when John 

Adams, Benjamin Franklin, and John Jay acted as ministers 

plenipotentiary in traveling to Great Britain to seal the terms of 

peace, all three names were on one passport. It was addressed “TO 

ALL Captains or Commanders of ships of war, privateers, or armed 

Vessels...”

During the Articles of Confederation period (1783-1789), passports 

were issued but not required. When the US Constitution was ratified, 

creating a new government, passports continued to be issued but not 

required. Many American states and cities also issued their own 

“voluntary” passports until 1856 when the Department of State 

exerted a federal monopoly, ostensibly to eliminate confusion.

Nevertheless, passports were not mandatory except for a period 

during the American Civil War (1861-1865) and during World War I 

(1914-1918). The latter can be seen as the beginning of the current 

American passport. On December 15, 1915, President Woodrow Wilson 

issued Executive Order No. 2285, “[r]equiring American citizens 

traveling abroad to procure passports.” 

This was followed in 1918 by an act of Congress granting the 

president authority to require passports during time of war. 

Passports remained mandatory until early 1921.

Thereafter, the United States continued its “no-passport-required” 

travel policy until another war: World War II (1939-1945). In 1941, 

passports became mandatory for travel abroad and remain so to this 

day. (Travel to Canada used to be an exception; until recently, 

proof of citizenship was all that was required to cross the border.)

Passports clearly function as an essential and effective means 

through which a state can control the person and property of its 

residents. Consider the United States. No one can legally leave 

without one.

And yet passports can be denied for a myriad of reasons that have 

nothing to do with being “an enemy of the state” but rest strictly 

on statutory grounds. Common reasons for denial include owing money 

to the IRS, a federal arrest, a state-criminal court order existing, 

a drug arrest, being on parole or probation. Law-enforcement 

databases are routinely checked against both passports and 

applications to weed out those who have committed such offenses as 

being more than $2,500 behind on child-support payments. Passports 

can also be revoked for several reasons, although revocation is far 

less common.

Those who meet the legal requirements for a passport move on to the 

next stage of social control. After handing over documents, a 

traveler is questioned about the reasons for travel, how much money 

he carries, his occupation, and virtually any other question a 

border agent wishes to ask. The traveler’s person and property are 

“searched” in various ways, including a strip search at the agent’s 

discretion. If the traveler questions or evinces disapproval, then 

he could be denied the “right” to board a plane, thus wasting an 

expensive ticket. Or he may be pulled aside for special treatment, 

including fines or interrogation by the police.

Requiring a passport as the key to freedom of movement is akin to 

gagging someone while maintaining that he retains freedom of speech.

The passport has grown into what is arguably the single most 

powerful tool of totalitarian America, second only to law 

enforcement itself. It no longer pretends to protect individuals; 

not a single terrorist has been apprehended as a result of passport 

checks. But it does cement the totalitarian state. The mandatory 

passport should be reviled and rejected as an abuse of human rights 

and common decency. A nation that requires one cannot be free.

Regards,

Wendy McElroy ,

for The Daily Reckoning

Ed. Note: Wendy McElroy is a Canadian born individualist anarchist 

and individualist feminist. She was a co-founder along with Carl 

Watner and George H. Smith of The Voluntaryist in 1982. Her articles 

are widely published on libertarian websites. A version of this 

column originally appeared on mises.org on September 7, 2011.