Internal Passport

An internal passport is an identity document which is or was used in some countries to control the internal movement and residence of its people. Countries that currently have internal passports include Russia, Ukraine, China and North Korea.

When passports first emerged, there was no clear distinction between internal and international ones. Later, some countries developed sophisticated systems of passports for various purposes and various groups of population. Passports were used to control internal movements and residence of people in Imperial Russia, France, the Confederate States of America, the Soviet Union, the Ottoman Empire, South Africa during Apartheid and other countries.

Read more about Internal Passport:  Soviet Union and Its Successors, People's Republic of China, Other

Famous quotes containing the words internal and/or passport:

    We have our difficulties, true; but we are a wiser and a tougher nation than we were in 1932. Never have there been six years of such far flung internal preparedness in all of history. And this has been done without any dictator’s power to command, without conscription of labor or confiscation of capital, without concentration camps and without a scratch on freedom of speech, freedom of the press or the rest of the Bill of Rights.
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    All are inclined to believe what they covet, from a lottery- ticket up to a passport to Paradise.
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