Is Global Digital Nomad Passport a Possibility?

Many countries have increasingly accepted the rise of remote workers as a new type of workforce which leads some to speculate whether or not there would be such a thing as a global digital nomad passport. But could this really happen? And what is the second-best option in the absence of such a passport?

The idea of a global passport has been long debated. In 1954, a man named Garry Davis founded a non-profit organization that prints a mock “World Passport” for many years now, but it is so far just a dream. But could this change? There is some ground for optimism here. Many of the services we need and use every day, at least in the western world, are already globalized. Banks and credit cards let us pay anywhere in the world, phone companies will connect our calls from outside of our borders, and the internet has made it absurdly easy to be in one country in the morning and in another country by the evening.

So having a passport that would allow us to travel to any country makes a lot of sense. But as many critics of current fragmented visa laws have noted, this is unlikely to change any time soon. As the various nations of the world each have their own agreements and rules, it is unlikely to think that they will let go of these for an unregulated movement of people across their borders. As long as there are independent nations, it seems this passport will remain hard to put into practice, at least unless a third party manages to get involved.

But some could argue that there is already a version of a global passport, though obviously more localized, in Europe’s Schengen area. Citizens of the EU can travel and work in any EU nation without so much as a visa and they need nothing more than an ID card issued by their government. This even extends to healthcare, as holders of the European Health Insurance Card can access the state healthcare system of another EU country. Were this system to spread to other countries, we could see a slow emergence of something that would be nearing a global passport.

While the global version of a digital nomad passport is some ways away, many countries have already embraced their remote worker communities, making travel for them easier. However, these are a far cry from the idealistic vision of a unified passport. Take the Czech Republic, for example. In recent years, Czechia has implemented a new visa-like option for freelance workers, remote or otherwise, which lets them stay for up to a year and can be renewed.

However, the barrier to entry is a fairly complicated process that stands between you and a compulsory Czech trading licence without which you will not be able to work remotely in this way. A far better solution can be seen in Portugal, where the nation implemented independent workers and entrepreneurs visas, making it very easy for remote workers to come to the country. But as you can see, the core problem of different countries with their individual rules which makes travel between countries for digital nomads difficult does not go away even with good rules. It seems that the current state of affairs will not change just yet.