By Parviz Malakouti-Fitzgerald, Esq.
This article is part of our series on mobility concept & strategy explainers.
Any threat to the ability of someone to obtain, renew, or possess a valid passport from their country of citizenship is a passport attack vector.
For the vast majority of people, lack of a passport severely curtails, if not entirely removes their ability to move freely between countries. By my count, there are at least nine passport attack vectors:
Your government cancels your passport (ex. U.S. & Edward Snowden).
Someone steals or confiscates your passport (ex. tourist traveling abroad or human traffickers).
You lose your passport (at home or abroad).
Your government is too strained, inept, corrupt or backlogged to timely create or renew your passport (ex. Venezuela).
Your passport is with a foreign consulate awaiting a visa stamp while you need to travel urgently.
You can't renew your passport because you're seeking asylum elsewhere and to preserve your claim, you can't avail yourself of the protections or benefits of your home country.
Someone (possibly a border agent) damages or destroys your passport.
Your government challenges your naturalization eligibility when you try to renew your passport (ex. Hungarian simplified naturalization).
A court or government agency demands surrender of your passport.
So far, I've had clients dealing with six of the nine. They’re not pleasant to resolve, so we'll discuss preventative measures and solutions in future Malakouti Law articles.
Reliance on one passport from a single country means a person’s freedom of movement is vulnerable to a single point of failure. This is why at Malakouti law, we are staunch advocates for dual and triple citizenship to assure safety, prosperity and freedom of movement.