# Most useless passport **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [July 25, 2016, 1:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-useless-passport/760824 "2016-07-25T01:41:47Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![drewder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/57b2e6/32.png) [@drewder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/drewder)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2016, 1:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-useless-passport/760824/1 "2016-07-25T01:41:47Z")
What passport is generally accepted by the fewest countries. A few possibilities come to mind Iroquois, North Korean, Zealandian. I don’t have any real numbers though. Another thought on how it could be answered is a passport which lets you enter without visa into the fewest countries. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2016, 1:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-useless-passport/760824/2 "2016-07-25T01:51:23Z")
South Africa set up four “independent” homeland republics inside South Africa: Bophuthatswana, Ciskei, Transkei, and Venda. The only countries that recognized them as nations were South Africa and each other. All four “nations” were incorporated back into South Africa in 1994. ---
**Author:** ![zev\_steinhardt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/97f17d/32.png) [@zev\_steinhardt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/zev_steinhardt)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2016, 2:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-useless-passport/760824/3 "2016-07-25T02:01:15Z")
How about a passport from Sealand? That’s got to be pretty worthless (in terms of travel). > **[Principality of Sealand](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principality_of_Sealand)** > > Coordinates: .mw-parser-output .geo-default,.mw-parser-output .geo-dms,.mw-parser-output .geo-dec{display:inline}.mw-parser-output .geo-nondefault,.mw-parser-output .geo-multi-punct{display:none}.mw-parser-output .longitude,.mw-parser-output .latitude{white-space:nowrap}51°53′42.6″N 1°28′49.8″E / 51.895167°N 1.480500°E / 51.895167; 1.480500 > The Principality of Sealand (/ˈsiːˌlænd/) is an unrecognised micronation that claims HM Fort Roughs (also known as Roughs Tower), an offshore platform in... Zev Steinhardt ---
**Author:** ![alphaboi867](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alphaboi867/32/3898_2.png) [@alphaboi867](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/alphaboi867)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2016, 2:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-useless-passport/760824/4 "2016-07-25T02:18:31Z")
> [@drewder](#): > > What passport is generally accepted by the fewest countries. A few possibilities come to mind Iroquois, North Korean, **Zealandian**. I don’t have any real numbers though. Another thought on how it could be answered is a passport which lets you enter without visa into the fewest countries. Bolding mine. A [New Zealand passport](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Zealand_passport) gives visa-free access to over 170 countries and territories. ---
**Author:** ![UDS](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ecae2f/32.png) [@UDS](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UDS)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2016, 2:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-useless-passport/760824/5 "2016-07-25T02:32:56Z")
There’s any number of micronations that exist or existed for a time (Wikipedia has a [list](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_micronations)). Some of them are jokes; some have a slightly more serious purpose, but very few of them exercise meaningful control over any territory. Many of them have issued passports, usually for the purposes of publicity or revenue-raising. These passports are functionally useless. You could quibble, though, over whether these documents are passports at all, any more than Monopoly money is money. If we confine ourselves to states that actually exist in the sense of controlling territory or appearing to, the most useless passports are those issued by the states with the most limited international recognition. There’s a bunch of Russian-sponsored states in the Caucasus that declared independence in the early 1990s when the Soviet Union disintegrated - South Ossetia, Nagorno-Karabakh, Abkhazia, Transnistria. Russia recognises some of them, mainly to piss off other Soviet successor states in the region like Moldova and Georgia. Otherwise, they are pretty much recognised only by one another. To be honest, I’m not sure how functional they still are, but I wouldn’t like to have a passport issued by one of these as my only travel document. The Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus is recognised only by Turkey, and I’m not sure how useful its passports are for visiting anywhere that isn’t Turkey. The Republic of Cyprus regards TRNC territory as beloning to it, and everyone born there as a citizen of the Republic of Cyprus, and will issue them with passports, and I think most North Cypriots who travel do so on RoC passports. ---
**Author:** ![Lord\_Feldon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lord_feldon/32/341_2.png) [@Lord\_Feldon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lord_Feldon)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2016, 4:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-useless-passport/760824/6 "2016-07-25T04:31:34Z")
Tonga will give a “protected person passport” to anyone with the money to buy one. I don’t think it offers visa-free travel anywhere, and many countries don’t recognize it at all. You can’t even enter Tonga with it. It’s not cheap, so there must be _some_ benefit to it or else nobody would buy it, but I don’t think it would be useful at all for an ordinary person. ---
**Author:** ![jtur88](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e9c0ed/32.png) [@jtur88](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jtur88)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2016, 4:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-useless-passport/760824/7 "2016-07-25T04:33:48Z")
Actually, North Korean would be one of the MOST useful. It is the only one that will get a North Korean out of North Korea. I met a Moldovan girl on the bus from Galati to Chisinau, she said she has both a Romanian and a Moldovan passport. She is very proud of her Moldovan passport and uses it whenver possible, but often has to use her Romanian passport for convenience when traveling abroad. Most people from obscure countries have another passport of convenience, if they travel a lot. ---
**Author:** ![UDS](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ecae2f/32.png) [@UDS](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UDS)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2016, 4:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-useless-passport/760824/8 "2016-07-25T04:44:49Z")
> [@jtur88](#): > > Most people from obscure countries have another passport of convenience, if they travel a lot. I suspect that may need to be put the other way around. “People from obscure countries may only be able to travel a lot if they’re able to obtain a passport of convenience.” ---
**Author:** ![drewder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/57b2e6/32.png) [@drewder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/drewder)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2016, 5:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-useless-passport/760824/9 "2016-07-25T05:51:47Z")
> [@alphaboi867](#): > > Bolding mine. > > A [New Zealand passport](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Zealand_passport) gives visa-free access to over 170 countries and territories. who said **New** Zealand [http://mw.micronation.org/wiki/Zealandian\_Passport](http://mw.micronation.org/wiki/Zealandian_Passport) ---
**Author:** ![nightshadea](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/7ba0ec/32.png) [@nightshadea](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nightshadea)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2016, 6:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-useless-passport/760824/10 "2016-07-25T06:53:12Z")
Zealandia is a animal/nature preserve ? (that’s all I found on the place its self ) ---
**Author:** ![UDS](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ecae2f/32.png) [@UDS](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UDS)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2016, 7:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-useless-passport/760824/11 "2016-07-25T07:16:22Z")
Zealandia is a micronation so insignificant that it hasn’t yet made it to the Wikipedia list of micronations. According to this article it claims about 9 sq ---
**Author:** ![UDS](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ecae2f/32.png) [@UDS](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UDS)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2016, 7:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-useless-passport/760824/12 "2016-07-25T07:21:54Z")
Zealandia is a micronation so insigfnicant that it hasn’t yet made it to the Wikipedia list of micronations. According to [this article](http://mw.micronation.org/wiki/Zealandia) it claims about 9 sq km of territory, but it’s not entirely clear where that territory is. Its [website](http://www.zealandiagov.info/)seems to be inactive, so good luck with your passport application! (Perhaps the most useless passport is the one you can’t get in the first place?) ---
**Author:** ![Princhester](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/3e96dc/32.png) [@Princhester](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Princhester)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2016, 7:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-useless-passport/760824/13 "2016-07-25T07:47:06Z")
> [@jtur88](#): > > Actually, North Korean would be one of the MOST useful. It is the only one that will get a North Korean out of North Korea. Wouldn’t that be the _only_ thing it would be useful for? ---
**Author:** ![kambuckta](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/53a042/32.png) [@kambuckta](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kambuckta)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2016, 7:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-useless-passport/760824/14 "2016-07-25T07:54:13Z")
> [@jtur88](#): > > Actually, North Korean would be one of the MOST useful. It is the only one that will get a North Korean out of North Korea > [@Princhester](#): > > Wouldn’t that be the _only_ thing it would be useful for? Sounds like a good start though… ---
**Author:** ![cardinal\_fang](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cardinal_fang/32/15316_2.png) [@cardinal\_fang](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cardinal_fang)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2016, 9:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-useless-passport/760824/15 "2016-07-25T09:04:06Z")
According to [this site](https://www.passportindex.org/byRank.php) (Passport Index[sup]TM[/sup]), Afghanistan “wins.” North Korea does surprisingly well. The “weakest” passports appear to be concentrated in Africa and Asia. ---
**Author:** ![Lord\_Feldon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lord_feldon/32/341_2.png) [@Lord\_Feldon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lord_Feldon)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2016, 9:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-useless-passport/760824/16 "2016-07-25T09:08:10Z")
> [@cardinal\_fang](#): > > North Korea does surprisingly well. Probably because ordinary North Koreans can’t get passports, so the only people with them are (relative) elites. North Korea filters out the people most likely to settle illegally on their end. ---
**Author:** ![jtur88](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e9c0ed/32.png) [@jtur88](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jtur88)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2016, 12:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-useless-passport/760824/17 "2016-07-25T12:57:00Z")
Passports can be a real pain in the ass for people from countries with little clout. My Canadian wife had to get a new passport when we were living in a country that had no Canadian representation. For no other reason than that she had used up all her visa pages. The British embassy agreed to carry her passport in a diplomatic pouch to an unsafe country where a civil was was going on, in order to get additional pages affixed by the Canadian consul. And that pales, in comparison to a white girl I met in Bolivia, whose Zimabwean passport was stolen, and she had been stuck in Bolivia for months with no reasonable prospects that the difficulty would ever be resolved, and no embassies feeling obliged to help, and the nearest Zimbabwean consul in London, with little sympathy for the few remaining white settlers after independence. ---
**Author:** ![Hari\_Seldon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hari_seldon/32/5173_2.png) [@Hari\_Seldon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hari_Seldon)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2016, 1:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-useless-passport/760824/18 "2016-07-25T13:46:36Z")
> [@jtur88](#): > > And that pales, in comparison to a white girl I met in Bolivia, whose Zimabwean passport was stolen, and she had been stuck in Bolivia for months with no reasonable prospects that the difficulty would ever be resolved, and no embassies feeling obliged to help, and the nearest Zimbabwean consul in London, with little sympathy for the few remaining white settlers after independence. Wouldn’t Bolivia eventually deport her (for being illegally there), presumably to Zimbabwe? ---
**Author:** ![jtur88](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e9c0ed/32.png) [@jtur88](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jtur88)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2016, 2:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-useless-passport/760824/19 "2016-07-25T14:57:25Z")
> [@Hari\_Seldon](#): > > Wouldn’t Bolivia eventually deport her (for being illegally there), presumably to Zimbabwe? I have no idea, I did not have an in depth conversation with her about it. But a country can’t just deport somebody by taking them to the border and dropping them off in no-man’s land. You have to go through a formal legal procedure of deportation, with a compelling justification for doing so, and then incur the cost of transporting the subject to a country willing to admit them. Bolivia has the discretion to keep on extending her tourist visa under unusual circumstances. She has committed no willful crime there. In a sense, it like some German tourists I knew who were in a car accident in Jordan, and one of them was in the hospital for almost a year, well beyond their visa expiration. ---
**Author:** ![Boozahol\_Squid\_P.I](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/d9b06d/32.png) [@Boozahol\_Squid\_P.I](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Boozahol_Squid_P.I)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2016, 3:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-useless-passport/760824/20 "2016-07-25T15:12:01Z")
How about North Cyprus? That would only get you into Turkey and home again. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-useless-passport/760824.md?page=2)