The Passport In America: The History Of A Document - Plot & Excerpts
officials were not alone in seeing the value of requiring aliens to have passports and visas in peacetime; foreign governments made the same demand of U.S. citizens. Therefore, when the number of U.S. citizens traveling abroad dramatically increased in the 1920s, so did the number of citizens who came across the demand to identify themselves through documents. The initial responses to this situation made clear that using identification documents was a novelty for the majority of the population. The reactions also indicate that this was typically not an enjoyable first encounter. Having completed a journey through Europe in 1919, one traveler considered the passport a “souvenir of the persisting doubt, the official suspicion of your character.”1 An article in the Washington Postdeclared, “It is difficult for any one who has not actually gone through it to realize the feelings of personal humiliation which the process implies. In many instances passport officials went apparently on the theory that every applicant was to be considered a spy until he had proved the contrary.”2 The causes of frustration with the process of obtaining a passport included the demand to apply in person along with a witness, the need to submit a photograph, and the requirement for documentary proof of citizenship—an application process that was less acceptable outside of a wartime state of emergency.
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