Who Opens More Than They Receive
2026-10-09
Visa access is described as reciprocal. Measured one country at a time, it mostly is not.
Take each country's two numbers from our own dataset: how many of the world's 197 passports it admits without a prior visa, and how many destinations its own passport opens. Subtract. The gap is the asymmetry.
Both ends of the measure
Counted in October 2026:
| Opens far more than it receives | Admits | Own passport opens | Gap |
|---|---|---|---|
| Syria | 193 | 71 | +122 |
| Somalia | 196 | 76 | +120 |
| Iraq | 194 | 77 | +117 |
| South Sudan | 196 | 82 | +114 |
| DR Congo | 196 | 83 | +113 |
| Pakistan | 191 | 81 | +110 |
| Nigeria | 196 | 86 | +110 |
| Receives far more than it opens | Admits | Own passport opens | Gap |
|---|---|---|---|
| United States | 46 | 177 | −131 |
| Canada | 52 | 177 | −125 |
| New Zealand | 59 | 180 | −121 |
| Japan | 76 | 180 | −104 |
| Brunei | 61 | 164 | −103 |
| Mexico | 64 | 166 | −102 |
| Ireland | 80 | 181 | −101 |
The United States admits 46 of the world's passports and its own passport opens
- 1. Syria admits 193 and its own opens 71.
The identity nobody mentions
Across all 197 countries, the average asymmetry is exactly zero.
Not approximately — exactly. Every grant of access is simultaneously one country admitting and another country reaching, so the two totals are the same number counted twice. 97 countries sit on the positive side, 99 on the negative, and the sum is zero by construction.
That makes this a distribution question, not a volume question. Visa access is not scarce in the aggregate; it is unevenly allocated. Any claim that the world is "opening up" or "closing" must be a claim about who holds access, not about how much exists.
Why the ends look the way they do
Access is granted on assessed risk and on reciprocity, and the two pull against each other.
A country facing conflict or administrative disruption often maintains an open or simplified entry policy — sometimes because the infrastructure for a restrictive one has broken down, sometimes as deliberate openness toward tourism or trade — while its own nationals face tight restrictions elsewhere.
A country that is a major destination for migration tends to assess inbound risk tightly while its own passport is granted access broadly, because the same assessment runs in its favour everywhere else.
Neither pattern is a judgement about any country. It is what the arithmetic of risk-weighted, non-reciprocal grants produces, and it is visible in the data rather than inferred from it.
Two numbers we are not standing behind
At the extremes our dataset records Turkmenistan admitting 0 of 197 passports and Nauru admitting 14. Zero is a value that aggregate datasets produce when an entry is missing as readily as when it is accurate, and we have not verified either figure against those countries' own authorities.
They are therefore excluded from the tables above. We would rather publish seven rows we are confident in than nine that include a number we have not checked. The same caution applies throughout: these are counts from our dataset, not statements about any country's current policy.
What it means for you
If you hold a passport on the positive side, the ranking is measuring a restriction placed on you by others — not a policy choice your own country made. The two directions are genuinely separate, and your country opening its doors does not move your own score at all.
That is also why your rank can move without anything changing at home, as set out in why your rank moved.
Our visa data comes from the open Passport Index dataset, refreshed automatically every day, with our own verified corrections applied on top. It is not an official government feed.
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