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The UAE passport is rated as the most powerful passport in the world. Bradai Abderrahmen/Getty Images
The United Arab Emirates will issue the best passports in the world in 2023, according to new research.
Passports from the UAE, Luxembourg and Switzerland are the most powerful in the world, according to the latest rankings by Nomad Capitalist, which has offices in the US and five other countries and helps its clients relocate abroad.
The company analyzed data from 199 passport-issuing countries and territories to arrive at the ranking.
The UAE passport jumped 31 places from last year’s ranking, which ranked Luxembourg’s passport as the most powerful in the world.
Passports from small landlocked European countries located between Belgium, France and Germany are, according to certain criteria, considered richest country in the worldfalling to second place in the 2023 ranking.
The US ranks 43rd, and the US passport is not as strong as Romania, Canada and Malaysia.
Much of Nomad Capitalist’s ranking comes down to visa-free travel — that is, the number of countries a passport allows its holder to enter visa-free.
This means that the top rankings are European countries, with EU, EEA and Swiss citizens able to work and travel freely within each other’s countries.
However, other factors — including taxes levied on citizens of each passport-issuing country, a country’s image worldwide, and the personal liberties of each country’s citizens — also play a role in Nomad Capitalist’s rankings.
The passport holder’s ability to hold dual citizenship is also taken into account.
Although the UAE’s score in the nomadic capitalist’s measure of freedom falls slightly between 2022 and 2023, its absence of income tax for its citizens, combined with a significant increase in the number of countries passport holders can visit without a visa, helped it soar to the top.
The UAE was also named the most powerful passport in the world in a separate ranking published in January By Aton Capital.
According to Nomad Capitalist’s index, UAE passport holders can visit 181 countries visa-free, more than any other country in the ranking. Last year, Nomad Capitalist found that UAE passports only allow visa-free access to 175 countries.
While U.S. passport holders have visa-free access to an impressive 173 countries, the U.S. loses points due to strict rules that mean even citizens living abroad are obligated to pay U.S. taxes.
The question prompts a quarter of U.S. expats to Considering renunciation of U.S. citizenshipaccording to a 2022 poll.
In Nomad Capitalist’s 2023 rankings, the U.S. also received average scores for how it is viewed around the world and for the personal freedoms it offers its citizens, as well as the country’s travelers and expatriates.
The US ranks in 2023, slipping two spots from the previous year.
At the bottom of the scale, Afghanistan was rated as the least powerful passport, a position it also held last year due to the limited number of countries its holders can visit visa-free and the country’s low level of personal freedom.
Yemen, Iraq, Pakistan and Eritrea rounded out the bottom five.
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