Havana Cuba. — For the fifth consecutive year, the Japanese passport ranks first in the ranking of the most powerful in the world, allowing its users access to 193 destinations out of a total of 227 worldwide. South Korea and Singapore follow, followed immediately by Spain and Germany.
According to The Henley Passport Index, the first twenty seats correspond mostly to countries of the European Union, Eastern Europe, Luxembourg, Canada, the United Kingdom and the United States; while in Latin America Chile is ranked 18th, and number 20 is shared by Argentina and Brazil.
It is not at all strange that the Cuban passport appears among the least powerful in the American continent, occupying the 80th position with only 65 accessible destinations without a visa. The tendency of islanders to emigrate for political and economic reasons places them at the mercy of a severe selectivity process to obtain a visa, with recurring refusals.
Several years ago a group of nations allowed visa-free entry for Cubans, among them Russia and Serbia, which have been used as an access route to the European Union. At the end of 2021, Nicaragua also eliminated the visa requirement for Antilleans, and the result has been almost 280,000 immigrants arriving in the United States through the southern border.
Countries with prosperous economies and a high rate of development are inaccessible to Cubans if they do not first go through a cumbersome visa process, where they must demonstrate economic solvency and incentives or properties that would presumably make them return to their country of origin, ruling them out as possible immigrants.
In international airports, showing the Cuban passport is reason enough for its bearer to be subjected to an interrogation, through which it is sought to detect any intention to stay illegally in that country. The Cuban passport is among the least reliable and most useful on the planet, as well as being expensive in proportion to the average salary on the island.
The Cubans themselves recognize that it is only worth investing that money if the objective is to emigrate, which is why the Immigration and Aliens offices are overflowing with people, despite the new measures announced by the White House.
At the bottom of the ranking are Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, Palestine, Nepal and North Korea.
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