A passport is a travel document, usually issued by a country's government to its citizens, that certifies the identity and nationality
of its holder primarily for the purpose of international travel. Standard passports may contain information such as the holder's
name, place and date of birth, photograph, signature, and other relevant identifying information.
Many countries have either begun issuing or plan to issue biometric passports that contains an embedded microchip, making
them machine-readable and difficult to counterfeit. Previously issued non-biometric machine-readable passports usually remain
valid until their respective expiration dates.
A passport holder is normally entitled to enter the country that issued the passport, though some people entitled to a passport
may not be full citizens with right of abode . A passport does not of itself create any rights in the country being visited or
obligate the issuing country in any way, such as providing consular assistance. Some passports attest to the bearer having a status
as a diplomat or other official, entitled to rights and privileges such as immunity from arrest or prosecution. Where a country
does not recognise another, or is in dispute with it, it may prohibit the use of their passport for travel to that other country, or
may prohibit entry to holders of that other country's passports, and sometimes to others who have, for example, visited the other
country. Some individuals are subject to sanctions which deny them entry into particular countries.
Some countries and international organisations issue travel documents which are not standard passports, but enable the holder to
travel internationally to countries that recognise the documents. For example, stateless persons are not normally issued a national
passport, but may be able to obtain a refugee travel document or the earlier "Nansen passport" which enables them to travel to
countries which recognise the document, and sometimes to return to the issuing country.
Passports may be requested in other circumstances to confirm identification such as checking into a hotel or when changing
money to a local currency.
History
One of the earliest known references to paperwork that served in a role similar to that of a passport is found in the Hebrew
Bible., dating from approximately 450 BC, states that Nehemiah, an official serving King Artaxerxes I of Persia, asked
permission to travel to Judea; the king granted leave and gave him a letter "to the governors beyond the river" requesting safe
passage for him as he traveled through their lands.
Arthashastra mentions the first passport and passbooks in world history. According to the text, the superintendent of passports
must issue sealed passes before one could enter or leave the countryside.
Passports were an important part of the Chinese bureaucracy as early as the Western Han, if not in the Qin Dynasty. They
required such details as age, height, and bodily features. These passports determined a person's ability to move throughout
imperial counties and through points of control. Even children needed passports, but those of one year or less who were in their
mother's care might not have needed them.
Etymological sources show that the term "passport" is from a medieval document that was required in order to pass through the
gate of a city wall or to pass through a territory. In medieval Europe, such documents were issued to foreign travellers by local
authorities and generally contained a list of towns and cities the document holder was permitted to enter or pass through. On the
whole, documents were not required for travel to sea ports, which were considered open trading points, but documents were
required to travel inland from sea ports.
King Henry V of England is credited with having invented what some consider the first passport in the modern sense, as a means
of helping his subjects prove who they were in foreign lands. The earliest reference to these documents is found in a 1414 Act of
Parliament. In 1540, granting travel documents in England became a role of the Privy Council of England, and it was around this
time that the term "passport" was used. In 1794, issuing British passports became the job of the Office of the Secretary of State.
A rapid expansion of railway infrastructure and wealth in Europe beginning in the mid-nineteenth century led to large increases
in the volume of international travel and a consequent unique dilution of the passport system for approximately thirty years prior
to World War I. The speed of trains, as well as the number of passengers that crossed multiple borders, made enforcement of
passport laws difficult. The general reaction was the relaxation of passport requirements. In the later part of the nineteenth
century and up to World War I, passports were not required, on the whole, for travel within Europe, and crossing a border was a
relatively straightforward procedure. Consequently, comparatively few people held passports.
During World War I, European governments introduced border passport requirements for security reasons, and to control the
emigration of people with useful skills. These controls remained in place after the war, becoming a standard, though
controversial, procedure. British tourists of the 1920s complained, especially about attached photographs and physical
descriptions, which they considered led to a "nasty dehumanization". The British Nationality and Status of Aliens Act was
passed in 1914, clearly defining the notions of citizenship and creating a booklet form of the passport.
In 1920, the League of Nations held a conference on passports, the Paris Conference on Passports & Customs Formalities and
Through Tickets. Passport guidelines and a general booklet design resulted from the conference, which was followed up by
conferences in 1926 and 1927.
While the United Nations held a travel conference in 1963, no passport guidelines resulted from it. Passport standardization
came about in 1980, under the auspices of the International Civil Aviation Organization . ICAO standards include those for
machine-readable passports. Such passports have an area where some of the information otherwise written in textual form is
written as strings of alphanumeric characters, printed in a manner suitable for optical character recognition. This enables border
controllers and other law enforcement agents to process these passports more quickly, without having to input the information
manually into a computer. ICAO publishes Doc 9303 Machine Readable Travel Documents, the technical standard for machinereadable passports. A more recent standard is for biometric passports. These contain biometrics
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