Talk:Passport

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Passport has had a peer review by Wikipedia editors which is now archived. It may contain ideas you can use to improve this article.

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Contents 1 Types of Passports 2 Peer Review 3 Separating Visa-free from Passport-free Travel, Passports template and Common Passports 4 Soviet passports still being issued? 5 Suggested Changes after Peer Review. 6 Semi-Protection 7 Ship passports

[edit] Types of Passports

Removed from article in rewrite

• A lookalike passport may be issued by countries with complex nationality laws. In the United Kingdom, as a result of its colonial heritage, and domestic constitution has developed different classes of citizenship. Some passports are simply travel documents which offer no right of abode, while others indicate full right of residence. Meanwhile, not all UK citizens are automatically European Union citizens, and are issued with passports which carry no EU endorsements.

• Multiple passport regimes can operate in one country. The main example of this is China, where the One country, two systems model has resulted in Hong Kong and Macao having their own passports and immigration regulations. Numbers of countries and territories offering visa-free entries to these three type of passports vary.

Why remove these two points? The rewrite of the types of passports section is good, but isn't a lookalike passport a type of ordinary passport (a sub-type in essence)? After all both issues passports for British citizens in the UK and similar passports for other British nationals and Tonga has a passport for its citizens and a passport for its protected persons. "Mulitple passport regimes" could easily just be relocated to somewhere else in the body of the article, possibly incorporated into the introduction. Information shouldn't be entirely deleted from wikipedia unless of course it is incorrect. Oh and while you are organizing you might want to consider separating Visa-free travel and Passport-free travel (I am going to start a new section on this in this discusson page - see below).72.27.6.86 18:29, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

I moved them here because I didn't want to lose the information and can work it in elsewhere but neither of the above are recognised types of passport. There is no such thing as a lookalike passport for a start - just different types of national status. Thanks for your suggestions. Please feel free to make other suggestions as the article develops. Ta. --Spartaz 19:16, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for your quick reply. Hmmm...well I figured that "lookalike" passports were not a recognized type, but perhaps you could include it under Types of Passport under a new subtopic, or maybe give it a section of its own. You could also easily link the lookalike passport and multiple passport regimes under the same subheading in the article. By this I mean you could probably add a new section called "Lookalike" Passports (with the quotation marks to indicate that this is just a colloquial name) and then in the text make it clear that "Lookalike" passports are not a recognized type of passport (and thus do not officially exist) but are so called because they differ in some way from other passports issued by the same country due to differing types of national status. Then you could go on to detail the British "lookalike" passports. I haven't seen a Tongan Protected Person Passport (and the only Tongan passport picture I have seen on the web is of extremely low quality), but it probably does look similar to the Tongan Passport, so maybe it could be included (although it would also have to be linked to alien's passport and other similar travel documents). Then of course there are the three different passports for in use for the People's Republic of China (PRC): those for resident citizens of the Mainland, those for Hong Kongers and those for Macanese (in the broad senses of residents of Hong Kong and Macau). And by detailing the three PRC passports you could then incorporate the information about the multiple passport regimes. By the way, what about the proposed credit card sized US passport ("passport cards") for land and sea travel in the Western Hemisphere[1] [2]? What category will these "passport cards" fall into?72.27.6.86 02:47, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

Hmm - to the best of my knowledge a Tongan Protected Person has the same passport as a Tongan, its simply the stated nationality is different. Pretty much, the UK is the only major state that has several flavours of citizenship and this would not fit well in this article although it could be exanded on fully in the British passport article. I would agree that a very short mention of the different types of Chinese would be useful and I could mention the British stuff here as an aside. The gallery suffers from pretty much being incorrectly copyright tagged. The images that still exist can be found from the page history - just go back to a version of the page that stull had the gallery. I haven't seen the stuff on the US passport card, but if its a card not a passport than I would tend to view it as an ID card. Spartaz 06:59, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

Well, a Tongan Protected Person passport would seem to fall into the colloquial category of a lookalike passport since it would look pretty much like a regular Tongan passport with only small differences being due to nationality. I never envisioned a very long section, per se, just possibly something like this (you can edit it for inaccuracies or if it seems to imply something which isn't fact):

*"Lookalike" passport is the term used unofficially to refer to various passports which are similar in appearance that may be issued by countries with complex nationality laws such as the United Kingdom which has developed different classes of citizenship. as a result of its colonial heritage and domestic constitution. Some of these passports are simply travel documents which offer no right of abode while others indicate full right of residence, cf. a Tongan Protected Person Passport and a Tongan National Passport. Multiple passports dependent on citizenship and residency are also issued in the Peoples Republic of China (PRC), where the One country, two systems model has resulted in Hong Kong and Macau having their own passports and immigration regulations, separate from the rest of the PRC. This system is an example of Multiple passport regimes. The numbers of countries and territories offering visa-free entries to these three types of passports from the People's Republic of China vary.

For more information see: British passport, HKSAR Passport, MSAR passport and Nationality Law of the People's Republic of China.

I haven't found any wikipedia article on a regular PRC passport, Tongan passports and Tongan protected person passports (so I assume the articles don't exist) but we could add the links when such articles are created. As for the passport card just check the 2 links I gave, from what I've seen they are more than ID cards and are supposed to have more security features.72.27.6.86 02:50, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

I'm a bit worried that we might fall foul of the original research rules here. Unless we can find a reputable reference to lookalike passports than we shouldn't use the term. We can look at including the information elsewhere in the article. I wonder if we can get round this by adding a section on national status and discussing it there. Spartaz 05:37, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

Well then we should probably find a reputable reference, although I'm not sure if there will be any such reference for an unofficial term. I did a quick search and found these though: The UK Identity and Passport Service, British Embassy, Kathmandu and Expedia.co.uk passport and visa info for travel to Belgium. We can always get around this, if none of these references is suitable for the lookalike passports and if no reference is found for "multiple passport regimes" by simply re-wording the points, something like: Countries with complex nationality laws may issue various passports which are similar in appearance, for example the United Kingdom which has developed different classes of citizenship as a result of its colonial heritage and domestic constitution. Some of these passports are simply travel documents which offer no right of abode while others indicate full right of residence, cf. a Tongan Protected Person Passport and a Tongan National Passport. Multiple passports dependent on citizenship and residency are also issued in the Peoples Republic of China (PRC), where the One country, two systems model has resulted in Hong Kong and Macau having their own passports and immigration regulations, separate from the rest of the PRC. The numbers of countries and territories offering visa-free entries to these three types of passports from the People's Republic of China vary.72.27.29.151 03:38, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

I worked the above into the article as national status but we need a little cleanup if you have time because I'm not going to be free for a couple of hours. How does it read? The reference to lookalike passports on the IPS an dKathmandu websites may be sloppy editing. I'll ask in the British Embassy here when I pop in this morning and get back to you. Spartaz 06:26, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

It reads well, made a few minor corrections. The reference at the British Embassy in Kathmandu might be sloppy editing, but what about the official UK government Identity and Passport Service?72.27.29.151 05:35, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

Dunno about that. Possibly just sloppy - a lot of websites are run by techs who end us using all kinds of incorrect langauge because they don't know any better. I forgot to ask in the Embassy. I'll try and remember today. Thanks for the tidy. Spartaz 05:44, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Peer Review

The old review has been overtaken by time. Time for another. Spartaz 07:42, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Separating Visa-free from Passport-free Travel, Passports template and Common Passports

Okay, started this section a bit late, but as I commented to Spartaz earlier, this article contains information pertaining to visa-free travel (and in fact the visa article specifically points readers to this article to find out about visa exemption schemes). This struck me as very strange. There should be links between the visa-free travel and passport-free travel sections (since they are sometimes related and since passports and visas are also closely connected), but they should be under their respective articles, i.e. Visa (document) and Passport respectively. Although related, visa-free travel and passport-free travel are not the same thing.

Now that the gallery has been removed (which is good since galleries can very well form their own articles, e.g. Gallery of banknotes) there should be more space, but unfortunately you can no longer quickly link to the articles about the passports of individual countries. Therefore I suggest that a template of the world's passports organized by continents should be made (the template would have to have the "Hide" and "Show" feature of course so it wouldn't fill up too much of the page).

Finally I think there might be enough information about "Common Passports" or "Common Passport Designs" to warrant a new section in the article. After all there are common formats for passports of countries from various regional organizations such as the European Union (EU), Caribbean Community (CARICOM), Central America (Parlacen or CACM - not sure under which the common passport falls), Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) - with a common passport as well as a common travel certificate which can be used in place of a passport, the Andean Community and the East African Community (EAC). There was also apparently a proposed common passport for the Organization of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS) but this was overtaken and made redundant by the CARICOM passport and there are plans (or at least suggestions) for a Mercosur passport and a passport for the Economic and Monetary Community of Central Africa (CEMAC) which may or may not have come into existence yet. So overall thats at least 6 regional organizations on 3 continents that have common passport designs with 2 more that have plans for such passports. Related to this (but more appropriate under the Visa (document) article is the issue of common visas (Schengen visas for most EU and some non-EU states, the CARICOM visa and the Central American common visa).72.27.6.86 03:22, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

I agree. lets write it up and see how it looks. Spartaz 07:00, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

Okay, well the last part should be fairly simple since there is already a subsection in the article on "Common designs" (under "Standards"), I had thought that the amount of additional information might make the subsection so long that we should just turn it into a new section, but then again the current format looks fine. The current subsection though only details 3 existing common designs and one proposed (one which I had left out too), so I'll see if I can find more information on the ECOWAS and EAC passports (the ECOWAS wikipedia article only has 2 sentences on the ECOWAS travel certificate and the ECOWAS passport and the EAC article says nothing about passports although a web reference made mention of the launch of the EAC passport). I'll start though by summarizing the information for the Andean passport and the failed OECS passport from their wikipedia articles.72.27.6.86 03:15, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

I've already removed any sections that should definitely fall under the visa article and have begun to expand that article as well.72.27.29.151 05:39, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Soviet passports still being issued?

If it's true that Russia is still issuing and continues to honor USSR passports, perhaps this should be noted somewhere in the article? And if this is true, how does this relate to the legality of USSR camouflage passports? metaspheres 15:31, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

I think Russia has used up its old stock of former USSR passports and are now only issuing Russian passports - both with MID and UVD. I am very sceptical of the Soviet Camouflage passports. Until someone provides reliable sources that are not some dodgy website, I'm not persuaded that they exist. --Spartaz 16:01, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Suggested Changes after Peer Review.

• There are very few cites for the length of article, in particular the history has only one. It seems very disjointed as well, I think it should be cut back quite severely and only general information included, with as little country-specific stuff as possible (as there are too many countries to mention them all on the page, and to focus on particular ones is POV).
• Perhaps some country's passports are worthy of their own article while others aren't, I don't know, but it shows a lack of consistency. The whole topic could really do with some standardisation.

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[edit] Semi-Protection

Article was semi protected to deter a persistant IP linkspammer. I have already asked for it to be lifted at WP:RPP and was told it would be gone in a day or two. Can someone remind me to check or make a further request if this doesn't happen? --Spartaz 22:44, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Ship passports

In documents about the Barbary Wars I find several passports for ships (and those aboard). Most of the documents are text, although I have one image. Their purpose seems to be similar to passports for individuals (identification as belonging to the United States and request to be allowed to travel). Is a different name now used for this kind of document? (SEWilco 06:15, 19 January 2007 (UTC))

Not heard of that before. Is this still current I wonder? Might be worth aspearate article. They way we are going we will soon need a disambiguation page. --Spartaz 06:54, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

Found a U.S. government PDF which refers to it as a Mediterranean Passport which was used during that time period (but mentions through 1845, which is 30 years after Second Barbary War). I see the British called it a "Mediterranean Pass". Anyone know of other usage? (SEWilco 17:18, 19 January 2007 (UTC))

Created Mediterranean pass and will link to it. (SEWilco 19:44, 19 January 2007 (UTC))

I left you a note on your talk page but well done for putting that together so quickly. --Spartaz 20:37, 19 January 2007 (UTC)