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The news today reported that the US is intending to issue a "limited number" of commemorative passports for the 250th anniversary, and the design will reportedly include a picture of Trump in it (among other, more traditional images). Assuming that these passports are otherwise identical to the current ones (same data, built to the same international standards, etc), would a foreign country be able to reject just this version as a proof of identity, while still accepting other US passports?

Note that this isn't about whether or not they will let the person into the country - that's a matter of visas (or exemptions from them), and it's not about whether the foreign country will accept passports from the issuing country at all - there's lots of documented examples of places that you can't enter with certain countries' passports, or with a valid country's if it's stamped by some other one. This is specifically about whether a country can, under international standards, pick and choose which types of passports from another country to consider valid.

Are there examples of this happening before? Are there treaties which say that all passports must be considered equally valid? And, assuming it does happen, would the individual in question have any recourse other than to take their complaint to the US State department (via embassy or back in the US) to make it a diplomatic issue?

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    The answer to the title question seems so obviously "yes" to me that I wonder whether I am missing something. What do you imagine could prevent a sovereign nation from doing as you describe? Commented yesterday
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    @JohnBollinger - There's standards about what constitutes an acceptable passport, and presumably there are treaties where countries agree to recognize each other's passports as long as they conform to the standard. Since the passport is an identity document from the issuing country, the destination country doesn't get a say in what constitutes "validly issued" by the issuer or who should have one. So if whatever the agreement between the two countries is says that they have to accept "all valid passports", then picking-and-choosing would violate that since they don't determine validity. Commented yesterday
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    Which isn't to say that they couldn't do it regardless - they're sovereign, after all and if they want to violate a dozen treaties and decades of international norms in order to do something, they can. But the question is about what those norms about passports are, and if doing so is common/uncommon/rare-but-acceptable/unheard-of-but-valid/unacceptable/etc. If I had to pick an answer knowing nothing, I'd have assumed "yes", but I'm looking for something to actually confirm that and not just my speculation. Commented yesterday
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    I think you overestimate the breadth and depth of treaties covering this area, but in any case, "the question is about what those norms about passports are" does reveal what I was missing about the question. That doesn't come across to me at all in the question title or body. Commented 21 hours ago
  • @Bobson There are some agreements between very close countries like US-UK or Schengen Area, but the general case is that travel is at the host's discretion. It's possible that "trumpports" might find it harder to get a Lebanese or Iranian visa. Commented 23 mins ago

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Yes, they can and do. Notably, in 2025 several European countries (e.g. Estonia) stopped accepting Russian 5-year passports without biometric chips. Only 10-year biometric passports are valid. This is different from James K's example in that these countries are distinguishing between two otherwise valid versions of a specific country's passport based on a characteristic of the passport itself - exactly as in the question. There are also multiple countries that, while not outright rejecting non-biometric passports, require biometric passports for visa-free entry, including the US under the Visa Waiver Program (here called an "e-passport").

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    If I recall correctly, the e-passport requirement for the US visa waiver program was brought into effect first for Belgium, a few years before it was imposed generally. I recall less vividly that this was because of a perceived risk of encountering counterfeit non-biometric Belgian passports. This underscores the fact that a country can impose these restrictions selectively, both on certain countries and on certain classes of document issued by certain countries. Commented 2 days ago
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Yes. For example, in 2021, China stopped recognizing "British National (Overseas)" passports, but not other British passports.

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Yes, countries can pick and choose what types of passports they consider valid.

For example, the UK has issued passports with a stamped validity of more than 10 years (when a person has applied and received a passport before their previous passport has expired). The expiry date of the new passport is ten years after the expiry date of the old passport, not ten years after the issue date.

The EU (or more exactly "the Schengen region") can pick and choose when it thinks such passports are valid, and considers passports that are more than ten years after the issue date to be invalid. Since the EU also requires that immigrants have at least six months on their passport, it is possible to hold a UK passport, which will be valid (in UK law) for a year, and have it rejected for entry to the EU.

Now, rejecting a passport because it has a picture of Trump would be a fairly petty matter, but the example of the EU rejecting passports from the UK shows that countries can apply their own standards when deciding "Is the passport valid", and not the standards of the issuing country.

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    "considers passports that are more than ten years after the issue date to be invalid": that is not quite correct. It requires passports to have been issued less than ten years before entry, but it otherwise recognizes the validity of the passport. "requires that immigrants have at least six months on their passport": also not quite correct. It requires visitors to have three months' validity beyond the anticipated date of departure. So someone with a passport issued 9 years and 364 days earlier that has four months' validity remaining, who intends to stay for one month, is fine. Commented 2 days ago
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    They are fine with respect to the Schengen immigration authorities, at least, but there are reports of airline ground agents adhering to the misinterpretation reflected in this answer and therefore denying boarding to passengers who fall within the rules. This caused the European Commission to amend the border guards' handbook to address the question specifically; see for example home-affairs.ec.europa.eu/system/files/2022-11/…, page 28, paragraph 3.1(a). Also note that the EU no longer issues passports valid for more than 10 years. Commented 2 days ago
  • Correction: the last sentence of my previous comment should read "Also note that the UK no longer issues passports valid for more than 10 years." Commented yesterday
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    "Now, rejecting a passport because it has a picture of Trump would be a fairly petty matter" - They need not admit that as the reason. E.g., they could say something like, "As a matter of policy, we do not accept bespoke or limited edition passports. Our agents are trained to look for anything 'off' or 'different' as potential signs of passport forgery." Commented yesterday
  • EU vs UK: The EU always had different rules for passports from EU countries vs. passports from other countries. Nowadays UK counts as "other countries" with all the consequences. Commented 1 hour ago

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