In 1914, warring states of France, Germany, and Italy were the first<\/a> to make passports mandatory, a measure rapidly followed by others, including the neutral states of Spain, Denmark, and Switzerland. Although the use of passports can be traced back to the biblical era, a form of formal legislation came until 1921 when the U.S. passed the\u00a0Emergency Quota Act of 1921<\/a>\u00a0and later, the\u00a0Immigration Act of 1924<\/a>. Martin Lloyd explains in\u00a0The Passport: The History of Man\u2019s Most Travelled Document\u00a0<\/a><\/i>that this process began as a sort of\u00a0gentleman\u2019s agreement, but later escalated as a normal way to limit the inflow of immigrants.<\/p>\n In recent years, passports have faced a distinctly 21st-century identity crisis, becoming a highly sought after commodity, and like many commodities that are subject to private interests, depending on the color of our passport, our our country of origin, a passport has the power to grant us extreme privilege or extreme distress.<\/p>\n Understanding the important powers passports have been gaining through the years, The Henley Passport Index<\/a> studied\u00a0all the world\u2019s most powerful passports: Japan<\/a> and Singapore lead.<\/p>\n Among 199 passports, the ranking\u00a0based on exclusive data from the International Air Transport Association (IATA)<\/a> tallies up the number of countries that are accessible without obtaining a prior visa. The information is enhanced by ongoing research by the Henley & Partners Research Department.<\/p>\nPassports with power<\/h1>\n
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