When Passports Go Bad

I often write about the possibilities of obtaining dual citizenship and a second passport as means to increase travel safety, privacy and enjoy residence abroad.
 
But before you acquire a second passport, you must be certain that the passport is one that commands acceptance and prestige in the international community. If a passport is not likely to be recognized by all other countries, it's virtually worthless from the start.

In this age of instant communication it takes only hours, certainly no more than a few days, before customs and immigration officials worldwide know when a passport is called into question. In 1992, this happened with official, but illegally issued Dominican Republic passports and, in 1999, with passports issued by Panama.

In the latter case, a high passport official resigned alleging she had been pressured into issuing passports to various foreign business associates of the outgoing president. When the current President of Panama, Martin Torrijos, took office he canceled more then 400 official "diplomatic" passports his predecessor had issued, illegally he claimed, to favored foreign friends.

All of this exposes a little known fact; that there is an expansive, lucrative underground black market in forged and faked passports. In 1997, forged Canadian passports were carried by two Israeli hit men who took part in an unsuccessful assassination attempt in Jordan. Even legal passports can go astray.  In 1998, the Samoan Government announced 150 of its official passports simply had been “lost.”  Since then thousands of official passports have been stolen or lost in France, Australia, Finland and Belgium.

In 2005 the United Kingdom admitted that in the prior year over 10,000 of their passports has been lost, stolen or disappeared.

"Worthless" South African Passports

Now it turns out that South African passports are being called into question.

The news is that the United Kingdom is "likely" to strip South Africa, a former British colonial possession, of its "visa-free" entry status this year because of rampant corruption in the South African Department of Home Affairs. That would mean that South Africans would have to pay £63 (nearly Rand 1000, US$123.00) and provide fingerprints, "facial biometrics" and travel documents to obtain visas to visit England. (More than a quarter of a million South African tourists, business people and family visitors to Britain would have to apply for visas each year).

"The door is being shut because corrupt home affairs officials have been dishing out genuine passports to people smugglers, foreign asylum seekers and -- allegedly -- suspected terrorists wanting to enter Britain," the report said. As a result, British immigration experts said, the South African passport was "no longer worth the paper it's written on".

Lights Out

This only adds to the horrendous woes afflicting South Africa and its nearly 44 million people. Currently rolling blackouts of electricity service are being suffered because of poor government planning on electric generation needs, grinding business and industry to a halt in Africa's leading industrial economy. AIDS is rampant because of wrong headed policies that have blocked drug treatment for the many thousands of afflicted. Now a wave of trained, professional managers and engineers of all races are leaving the country for better places to live.

South Africa rose to the top of the British government's visa "hit list" last month following a British trial that heard that at least 6,000 illegal Asian immigrants had been smuggled into Britain on South African passports. Last week Sir Stephen Lander, chairperson of Britain's Serious Organized Crime Agency, said that the case "is likely" to lead to visa controls being placed on all South Africans.

A spokesperson for the South African Home Affairs Ministry acknowledged that there were "major issues about the integrity and credibility" of South African passports, and that the government was attempting to deal with the passport corruption.

Typical, but hardly an inspiring or believeable response.

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