Common visa regions

Question

I learned today that Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, and Nicaragua have a Schengen-style common visa region though it is apparently poorly done.

I looked around some and found something exists or may exist soon for ASEAN, and for the GCC¹ countries.

Are there others?

Theres a list on Wikipedia, specifically where it says "Controls on entry to the entire XYZ are carried out at the first country of entry." — user71659, Commented Aug 30, 2018 at 2:06
@WGroleau We disapprove of link-only answers. But, hey, we also approve of questions that are "Please give me a big list of data items." — David Richerby, Commented Aug 30, 2018 at 11:09
I guess this is borderline on the “list” point. But it wasn’t a long list. :-). I asked because It wouldn’t (didn’t) occur to me to search for “open borders” and the hits on “common visa/travel/tourism/etc. regions” all used “common” as a modifier for “regions” instead of as a modifier for visa/etc. — WGroleau, Commented Aug 30, 2018 at 12:26

user71659 · Accepted Answer · 2018-08-30 07:24:27Z

2

According to Wikipedia, Regions where you enter once and travel without any further border controls:

Schengen (26 European states)
Common Travel Area (UK and Ireland)
CA4 (El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua) for non-air travel
Nordic Passport Union (Sweden, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Denmark), now encompassed by Schengen
Island of Saint Martin (France, Netherlands)

Schemes where a special visa is valid for multiple countries

Schemes that no longer exist

Benelux (Belgium, Luxembourg, Netherlands), expanded into Schengen
CARICOM Special Visa (15 Caribbean countries), coincided with 2007 cricket world cup

answered Aug 30, 2018 at 2:34

user71659

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I disagree with adding ASEAN to any list. First, there are border controls between ASEAN countries, so it doesn't belong in the open border list. Second, there's a huge number of country-to-country visa-free policies, if you're adding ASEAN policies, that opens the door to say US-Canada, Hong Kong-China, the entire US VWP, etc.
– user71659
Commented Aug 30, 2018 at 6:53
Removed GCC as there are border controls and it does not meet the criteria.
– Burhan Khalid
Commented Aug 30, 2018 at 6:56
Not sure the Common Travel Area really qualifies, as it allows citizens of either country to travel to the other with "minimal documentation", but visas are actually not valid for both (except the recent BIVS which applies only to a handful of countries). There are also document checks in many cases (though not all).
– jcaron
Commented Aug 30, 2018 at 11:01

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