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