Chapter 4. Passport and Visa system
Lead-in
1 What countries have you traveled in?
2 Do you prefer to travel inside your country or abroad?
3 Do you need different documents for domestic and international traveling?
4 What documents do you need to travel abroad?
5 Does it take you much time to get all the documents ready for the journey?
6 Look at the photos of different passports. What features are the same in all of the them?
A British passport with the name of A Peruvian passport with the name of
European Union in the top Andean Community in the top
An Argentine passport with the name of An ordinary Polish e-passport
Mercosur in the top
Text 1. Passport
Scan the text and do the tasks given after the text.
Vocabulary
1 citizenship – гражданство
2 congruent – соответствующий
3 consular – консульский
4 to permit – разрешать, позволять
5 attachment – прикрепление, присоединение
6 breakdown – распад; развал
7 enforcement – правоприменение
8 abolition – отмена; упразднение
9 manpower – рабочая сила
10 controversy – разногласия
11 auspice – покровительство
12 biometric – биометрический
13 to affix – ставить (подпись, печать)
14 designator – указатель
15 fraud – мошенничество, обман
A passport is a document, issued by a national government, which certifies, for the purpose of international travel, the identity and nationality of its holder. The elements of identity are name, date of birth, sex, and place of birth. Most often, nationality and citizenship are congruent.
A passport does not of itself entitle the passport holder entry into another country, nor to consular protection while abroad or any other privileges, in the absence of any special agreements which cover the situation. It does, however, normally entitle the passport holder to return to the country which issued the passport. Rights to consular protection arise from international agreements, and the right to return arises from the laws of the issuing country. A passport does not represent the right or the place of residence of the passport holder in the country which issued the passport.
It is considered unlikely that the term "passport" is derived from sea ports, but is considered likely to derive from a medieval document required to pass through the gate ("porte") of a city wall. In medieval Europe, such documents were issued to travelers by local authorities, and generally contained a list of towns and cities into which a document holder was permitted to pass. 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.
Early passports included a description of the passport holder. Attachment of photographs to passports began in the early decades of the twentieth century, when photography became widespread.
In the later part of the nineteenth century and up to World War I, passports were not required, on the whole, for international travel in Europe, and crossing a border was easy. Consequently, comparatively few people had passports. The breakdown of the European passport system of the early part of the nineteenth century was a result of rail travel. Trains, used extensively from the mid-nineteenth century onward, traveled rapidly, carried numerous passengers, and crossed many borders. Those factors made enforcement of passport laws difficult. The general reaction was abolition of passport requirements. The Ottoman Empire and the Russian Empire maintained passport requirements for international travel, in addition to an internal-passport system to control travel within it.
During World War I, European governments introduced border passport requirements for security reasons (to keep out spies) and to control emigration of citizens with useful skills, retaining potential manpower. These controls remained in place after the war, and became standard procedure, though not without controversy. British tourists of the 1920s complained, especially about attached photographs and physical descriptions, which they considered led to a "nasty dehumanisation".
In 1920, the League of Nations held a conference on passports and through tickets. Passport guidelines resulted from the conference, which was followed up by conferences in 1926 and 1927.
The United Nations held a travel conference in 1963, but passport guidelines did not result from it. Passport standardisation came about in 1980, under the auspices of the International Civil Aviation Organization, ICAO.
The standard passport format includes the name of the issuing country on a passport cover, a national symbol, a description of the document (e.g., passport, official passport, diplomatic passport), and, if the passport is biometric, the biometric-passport symbol. Inside, there is a title page, also naming the country. This is followed by a data page, on which there is information about the bearer and the issuing authority, although passports of some European Union member states provide that information on the inside back cover. There are blank pages available for foreign countries to affix visas, and to stamp for entries and exit. Passports have numerical or alphanumerical designators ("serial number") assigned by the issuing authority.
Standards for machine-readable passports have also been issued by the ICAO, with an area set aside where most of the information written as text is also printed in a manner suitable for optical character recognition.
To conform with ICAO standards, a biometric passport has an embedded radio-frequency identification (RFID) chip, which contains data about the passport holder, a photograph in digital format, and data about the passport itself. Many countries now issue biometric passports. The objectives for the biometric passports are to speed up clearance through immigration and the prevention of identity fraud. These reasons are disputed by privacy advocates. Governments are reluctant to acknowledge privacy concerns.
Although many countries issue biometric passports, few introduced the equipment needed to read them at ports of entry. In the absence of an international standard, it is not possible for one country to read the biometric information in passports issued by another country.
Text work
1. Give English equivalents for the following Russian words and word-combinations
1 давать право на въезд в другую страну
2 давать право на возвращение в страну
3 проходить через городские ворота
4 открытые торговые точки
5 правоприменение паспортных законов
6 сохраняя потенциальную рабочую силу
7 под покровительством Международная организация гражданской авиации
8 биометрический паспортный символ
9 оптическое распознавание
10 ввиду отсутствия международных стандартов
2. Find synonyms to the following words from the text
1 aim
2 to give right to do something
3 owner
4 to cross
5 to allow
6 unpleasant
7 appointed
8 typed
9 debated
10 distribute
3. Match the given words with definitions
1 nationality a) the power to give orders and make others obey
2 citizenship b) the fact of living in a particular place
3 residence c) membership of a particular nation
4 agreement d) an arrangement, a promise or a contract made with somebody
5 authority e) being a citizen of a particular country, with the rights and duties
that involves
4. Read and translate the following groups of words derived from a common root
1 nation – national – nationalize – nationality – nationalization
2 city – citizen – citizenship – citizenry
3 identity – identify – identification – identificational
5. Answer the questions
1 What is passport?
2 What facts of personality should be stated in any passport?
3 When was this document issued first?
4 Was it widely spread in the beginning of the 19th century? Why?
5 What features appeared in the 20th century?
6 Why were border passport requirements intriduced in World War I?
7 When did passport standartization come about?
8 What does the standard passport format include?
9 What is radio-frequency identification?
10 Do we have biometric passports?
Text 2. Russian passport
Scan the text and find the information about the countries that Russian people can visit without visas. Retell it to your partner. Discuss what other countries are desirable to have visa-free access.
Russian passports are issued to citizens of Russia for the purpose of international travel.
The Russian internal passport is the primary identity document for citizens of the Russian Federation residing in Russia. It is initially issued to citizens at the age of 14 by the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs, and has to be renewed at the ages of 20 and 45. Every citizen after the age of 14 who is a permanent resident of Russia is required to have a valid internal passport.
The passport contains the information about the full name of the citizen, his/her sex, birth date and birthplace and a picture of him/her. Also it contains remarks about his/her home address, military duty, marriage, children under 14, other internal and foreign passports issued by the Russian authorities, blood group (optional) and individual taxpayer identification number (also optional). All the data is filled in Russian. Any other remarks render it invalid.
The Russian police will sometimes do random ID checks to look for draft dodgers, illegal immigrants, people who don't have the proper registration, etc. Since the lack of an identity document can be grounds for temporary detention (it happens in practice though it is against the law), many Russians, especially young people, carry their passport whenever going outside.
The Russian internal passport serves as an identity document only within Russia. To go abroad to most countries with current exceptions for some ex-Soviet Union countries, and to reside there while retaining Russian citizenship, Russian adults need a passport for travel abroad issued by Russian authorities (in Russian: заграничный паспорт, zagranichny pasport; sometimes translated as international passport or foreign passport), which is valid for only 5 years and is not granted by default. In addition to the standard zagranichny pasport, there exist three special-purpose types of passports for traveling abroad: the diplomatic passport (issued to Russian diplomats), the service passport (issued to government employees going abroad on official business), and the seaman's passport. A citizen can be denied a passport for travel abroad, and hence the right to leave Russia, if: (s)he had, in order to get access to classified information, signed a contract with the government that included a provision restricting his/her right to leave the country; has been conscripted to the military or alternative civil service; is detained as a suspect for a crime; is under investigation or is serving his/her term according to a court decision; disobeys obligations imposed by a court decision; or has provided false information in his/her application. Children under 18 can only go abroad by consent of both parents or when permitted to do so by a court decision.
According to a somewhat outdated 2008 study done by Henley & Partners, Russian citizens could enjoy visa-free access to 60 countries and territories for short-term tourism visits. Russia was ranked 53rd in the study in terms of international travel freedom. So far, holders of the ordinary Russian travel passport can visit 81 country - either visa free or visa-on-the-border. An agreement between the European Community and Russia on the facilitation of the issuance of visas has been in force since June 1, 2007. It has unified the cost of visas, and made it easier to obtain visas for close relatives, journalists, official delegations, transport crew members and some other groups of visitors. Similar agreements have been signed, but not yet ratified, between Russia and Denmark, and Russia and Norway. Silvio Berlusconi, the Prime Minister of Italy, and later Alexander Stubb, the Foreign Minister of Finland have started public discussions on the future possibility for visa-free travel between the EU countries and Russia. Both the EU and Russia acknowledge, however, that there are many problems to be solved before visa-free travel is introduced. On November 26, 2008 the President of Brazil, Luis Inacio Lula da Silva and the President of Russia, Dmitry Medvedev signed an agreement on the abolition of visas for citzens of both countries for up to 90 days. A similar agreement was signed with Venezuela. A normal treaty ratification procedure by the parliaments is still required for the visa-free travel to become available with these two countries. Argentina is expected to join the visa-free regime with Russia sometime in 2009. Visa-free regime with Vietnam for up to 15 days was introduced on 01/01/2009.