[nagnatron]

This hits very close and I guess you only realize it if at some point of your life you live where you'd rather not but have no way to get out.

    I need permission from my government if I want to leave
    the country. Being given a passport is apparently not a
    right. Oh and they cost quite a bit of money and are 
    valid only 5 years. That works out to a certain amount of 
    money per day just to be able to exist outside the
    borders of the country I was born in. Good thing it
    doubles as an ID card, I can save a bit there. Now I’ve
    never done anything from the list of offenses that would
    stop me from receiving a passport but I really wonder who 
    gave who the right to stop anybody from going where they
    wanted to go. It makes very little sense to me, all these 
    countries each with their own set of laws, borders,
    border guards to keep people out of one place, border
    guards to keep people in another place and so on. It
    feels as though they’re all prisons, just large enough
    that you can’t see the fences on the edge. But the fences
    are definitely there. And you can only buy your way out.
    Never mind that to go somewhere else you are also going
    to have to buy your way in.

[jschuur]

I challenge the 'quite a bit of money' part. Fees for a Dutch passport amount to about US $100 at the UK embassy e.g. (I'm Dutch, but live in the UK):

http://www.dutchembassyuk.org/page/index.php?i=158

Sure, $100 sounds low for many people, even though it's a fortune for some. However, spread across a 5 year period, it's a little more than 5 cents a day.

[nagnatron]

The passport fee is not the problem. Until relatively recently I've had to(and still do for some countries) also provide a lot of paperwork and pay a visa fee to go to a neighboring country.

And I know 100$ sounds like not much but consider that my parents were not of means in a country of a rather low standard of living.

This may not be what the author meant with this paragraph but it's what resonated with me.

[bigiain]

Which, if it were the only complaint, could easily be dismissed. But there's more to government bureaucracy than just the passport department. How many other government departments are there who are saying "but it's barely 5 cents a day!"? Hundreds? Thousands? At what stage do we say "Hang on, that's _too_ much"? $5/day? $50/day? $500/day?

[rheide]

It's tax for living. It's bad.

[jschuur]

It's no such thing. You're not forced to get a passport. Plenty of people live quite happily in the same country or region they were born. People should travel, and experience other cultures, but they're not being forced to pay for a passport if they don't want to.

I see $100 as an administrative fee that covers the process of applying for a document, the issuing agency reviewing the credentials of the person applying and then manufacturing it based on the current security standards. If it were free, it would still come out of tax payers money somehow (FWIW, I'm not a Dutch taxpayer, since I don't live there).

The fact is, we live in a world with different cultures, different economies, different norms, and some have chosen to place limitations on who may enter/visit/move to them. Having documentation to meet another country's requirements is basic cost of living if I want to participate in a global society.

It's simply impractical to erase all border controls and have anyone be able to enter any country without an ID. Poorer populations would seek to better their lot quicker by moving to a richer country, rather than stimulating the economy where they're from. It's not ideal, but we can't live in a world where the entire third world can just decide to move to the industrial world because they don't impose immigration standards. And in order for them to do so, passports are needed.

If you can't afford $100 every 5 years, how can you afford to travel to another country?