If it weren't for passports, our world would look different
As BBC columnist notes, this was long before the modern passport system, painfully familiar to anyone who has ever traveled abroad. Today you stand in line, then hand over your standardized booklet to a person in uniform who looks up at your face to compare it with a photo where you look younger and slimmer. Perhaps he or she asks about your trip while the computer checks your name against lists of potential terrorists.
However, until relatively recently, passports were not such a commonplace. In essence, they served as a threat: a letter from some influential person demanding unhindered passage for the traveler—or else.
The concept of the passport as a guarantee of safety dates back to biblical times. And protection was then a privilege, not a right. Gentlemen like Gadsby who wanted a passport needed personal connections with the relevant state minister.
As Gadsby discovered, the most zealous bureaucratic nations of continental Europe saw in the passport the potential to become a means of social and economic control. In the last century, the French needed documents not only to leave the country but also to travel from city to city.
If now wealthy countries tighten control over their borders to keep out unskilled labor, in the past municipal authorities used this control to keep skilled workers from leaving. Over the years, thanks to railways and steamships, travel became faster and cheaper. As Martin Lloyd writes in his book The Passport, documents restricting the right to travel were unpopular.
French Emperor Napoleon III shared Gadsby's admiration for the more relaxed British approach to the issue. He called passports a "despotic invention" and abolished them in 1860. France was not alone in this. More and more countries either officially abolished passport requirements or simply stopped enforcing them, at least in peacetime. In the 1890s, one could travel to America without a passport—though it was better to be white.
Some South American countries enshrined the right to free movement without passports in their constitutions. In China and Japan, foreigners only needed a passport to travel within the country. By the early 20th century, countries requiring passports for entry or exit could be counted on one hand. It seemed that soon there might be none left at all.
What would the modern world look like if that had happened?
One September morning in 2015, Abdullah Kurdi, his wife, and two young sons climbed into a dinghy on the coast of Bodrum, Turkey, hoping to cross four kilometers across the Aegean Sea to the Greek island of Kos. But the boat capsized in open water. Abdullah managed to survive by clinging to the boat, but his wife and children drowned. The body of three-year-old Alan Kurdi washed up on the Turkish shore, where it was photographed by a Turkish agency correspondent. The photo became a symbol of the migration crisis that shook Europe all summer.
The Kurdi family did not want to stay in Greece. Ultimately, they hoped to start a new life in Vancouver, where Abdullah's sister Teema works as a hairdresser. Abdullah had money: the 4,000 euros ($4,460) he paid the smuggler could have bought plane tickets for the whole family—if only they had the right passports.
Because the Syrian government denied citizenship to ethnic Kurds, the Kurdis had no passports. But even if they had Syrian documents, they could not have boarded a plane to Canada. If they had passports issued by Sweden, Slovakia, Singapore, or Samoa, it might have worked out.
It may seem natural that the country name on our passport determines where we can travel and work—at least legally. However, this is a relatively recent historical invention, and in some ways quite strange.
Many countries prohibit employment discrimination based on characteristics a person cannot change—gender, age, sexual orientation, or skin color. A passport, of course, can be changed: for $250,000, for example, one can buy citizenship of St. Kitts and Nevis. But for the most part, our passport depends on our parents and our place of birth. And that is not chosen. Yet there are no loud calls to judge a person by their character rather than the color of their passport.
Less than three decades after the fall of the Berlin Wall, migration control is back in vogue. Donald Trump calls for building a wall on the US-Mexico border. The Schengen Area is cracking under the pressure of the migration crisis. European leaders feverishly try to separate refugees from "economic migrants" based on the idea that a person who is not fleeing persecution but simply wants a better job or a better life should not be allowed in.
Politically, the logic of migration restrictions is becoming harder to challenge. Economic logic, however, points in the opposite direction. In theory, when productivity follows demand, output increases. In practice, any migration process creates winners and losers, but according to research, winners far outnumber losers. In the most prosperous countries, according to some estimates, over 80% of the population benefits from an influx of migrants.
So why is the idea of open borders not so popular? For various practical and cultural reasons, managing migration can be difficult: if the system of public services does not update quickly enough to cope with the influx of newcomers, or if irreconcilable worldview conflicts arise between migrants and the local population. Moreover, the downsides of migration tend to be more noticeable than the upsides.
Let's imagine that several Mexicans come to America and are willing to pick fruit for less pay than Americans. The benefit – a slight reduction in fruit prices for everyone – is spread over too many people and is too small to notice, while the cost – job losses for some Americans – generates noisy discontent.
It could be arranged that the losses of the losers are compensated through taxes and budget expenditures. However, as a rule, this does not work. The economic logic of migration often looks more attractive when it does not involve crossing state borders.
In the 1980s, when Britain was mired in recession – and some regions of the country suffered more than others – Employment Minister Norman Tebbit suggested (or seemed to suggest) that the unemployed "get on their bikes" and go look for work. Some economists predict that global output would double if everyone could get on a bike and work anywhere. This suggests that the modern world would be much richer if passports had "died out" at the beginning of the 20th century. There is one simple reason why this did not happen: World War I intervened.
When security concerns took precedence over freedom of movement, authorities introduced new strict controls and were unwilling to give them up when peace came. In 1920, the newly founded League of Nations convened an "International Conference on Passports, Customs Formalities and Through Tickets," which essentially invented the passports we use today.
As a result of the conference, from 1921 the following requirements were introduced: passports must be 15.5 cm by 10.5 cm, consist of 32 pages, have a cardboard cover, and contain a photograph. Their format has changed surprisingly little since then. Like John Gadsby, a person with a passport of the right color can only rejoice in their good fortune.