Their freedom score doesn't really make sense (in the pdf <a href="https://s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/nomadcapitalist/Nomad-Passport-Index-2017.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/nomadcapitalist/Nomad-Pas...</a>).<p>For example, they give Malaysia 50, the highest score while giving 30 to France. Don't get me wrong, I love that country but it has rigged elections, no real freedom of press (Malaysia Kini an opposition website was censored during some of the elections by blocking their DNS), politicians from the opposition are imprisoned on spurious charges (Anwar for example) and corruption is endemic.<p>Japan which also has 50 is not a shining example of Press freedom, it's a country where innocent until proven guilty doesn't really hold (more than 99% conviction rate) and where police can detain someone for 3 weeks without charges being filled.<p>That said, I agree that France doesn't deserve the top score either due to new surveillance laws following terrorist attacks and due to the state of their prisons compared to the rest of EU but they shouldn't be ranked lower in Freedom than Japan and Malaysia.<p>Here's the text of how they describe how they calculate the Freedom Index they use for their ranking:<p><pre><code> The ability of citizens to live freely is responsible for 10% of each country’s total
ranking. We believe that freedom of speech and of the press is a good thing, and
imposing laws on non-resident citizens is generally a bad idea. This index relied on
data regarding mandatory military service, government spying programs,
incarceration rate, and laws targeting non-resident citizens (such as the United
States’ Foreign Corrupt Practices Act), as well as the World Press Freedom Index
and Economic Freedom Index to determine how free citizens of each country are,
particularly non-resident citizens. Each country was assigned a score from 10 to 50
based on our proprietary blend of these factors, with 10 being the least free and 50
being the most free.</code></pre>
"The U.S., by comparison, taxes citizens’ income no matter where it’s earned."<p>This is a common statement I see pretty often on the internet, often in the context of bashing the US. However, there's a big asterisk there if you look the rules up. If you're not making over 6 figures, you still have to file I believe, but you don't pay taxes. So the vast majority of Americans abroad are not paying taxes back to the US ($100800 / year is the cut off by the looks of it)[1].<p>I'm not saying it isn't annoying still to file with the IRS or there aren't people who are over the threshold getting burned, I just feel it's often a glossed over detail that puts the US in an unnecessarily harsh light, considering, again, most people won't be penalized financially here.<p>[1] <a href="https://time.com/money/4298634/expat-expatriate-taxes-us-myths/" rel="nofollow">https://time.com/money/4298634/expat-expatriate-taxes-us-myt...</a>
Naturally European countries will be the most open; the point of the EU is to provide a federalized government and reduce divisions.<p>It's not unlike the federalized state created by the American colonies in the 18th century: no taxes on inter-state trade, no inter-state immigration restrictions, standard docs, etc.
The values in the original PDF don't really add up [1]. It doesn't really change much, but it's still weird. If you apply the formula in the PDF to the listed values, they're all 1-5 points off:<p><pre><code> Each country’s value in each category is given the indicated
weighting to achieve a country’s total score using the formula
((Visa Free Travel x 0.5) +
(Taxation x 0.3) +
(Perception x 0.1) +
(Dual Citizenship x 0.1) +
(Overall Freedom x 0.1)).
</code></pre>
[1]: <a href="https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1vXSsukPDoqSwXPbR-FKtmRkZoiwHKZ1i7D_QFKhWvAk/edit?usp=sharing" rel="nofollow">https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1vXSsukPDoqSwXPbR-FKt...</a>
Canada #2 among countries not physically located in Europe, not bad. Guess I don't have to trade in my passport anytime soon.<p>A US passport would likely be more valuable if the IRS didn't demand so much of non-resident citizens.
What's the "most desirable passport" depends on how many want to get citizenship to the country issuing it (which for the US is quite a lot), not on how other countries receive it's owners.
Traveling in Vietnam, I met a woman with three passports. She sounded English, considered herself Dutch, but traveled on her US passport. Why? Because when you get into trouble in a foreign country, the US consulates like to flex their muscle, whereas most others, UK included, tend to just say "well, that was stupid of you".<p>They don't seem to have taken that kind of thing into account in their rankings.
Interestingly, Portugal (13 on the list) would jump to number 1 (with a score of 115) if they factored in the NHR scheme which gives new residents a 10 year tax break on foreign source income (though admittedly there are some strings attached to this - more info here: <a href="http://info.portaldasfinancas.gov.pt/NR/rdonlyres/D0C80C76-3DA8-4B90-A1E4-FF53BD34EF95/0/IRS_RNH_EN.pdf" rel="nofollow">http://info.portaldasfinancas.gov.pt/NR/rdonlyres/D0C80C76-3...</a>).
They don't seem to have taken into account the propensity of certain governments (mostly the US and UK) to undertake extreme measures to get their citizens out of trouble in foreign countries, up to and including mass evacuations and clandestine military operations. That's a feature Luxembourg doesn't offer.
To the title: not so, and not because I disagree with the sentiment, but because desirable has neither a comparative nor a superlative. So I parse it as not desirable at all, which the article sure won't claim. (but I aint gonna read it; too busy arguing semantics)
Only 10 points for dual citizenship for the Netherlands? Okay, it is not allowed by law, with exceptions, but when about 10% of your population holds dual passports, you could say it isn't enforced.
The title is wrong as it includes a piece of the abstract. The original title is "The Most Desirable Passports On Earth Don’t Include America’s."<p>Please someone remove the "visa" at the end as it makes no sense
The title should be "The Most Desirable Passports on Earth Don’t Include America’s", or if you must "The Most Desirable Passports on Earth Don’t Include America’s <i>Passport</i>". Visa doesn't make sense here.
I know many people in tech from non-US countries who went through a lot of trouble to get hired on H1B visas. The power of the US passport (for engineers) is the ability to work legally in the US.