Stateless Kurds also do not have the option of legally relocating to another country because they lack passports or other internationally recognized travel documents.

Officials at the Travel Industry Association of America, which represents the nation's largest airlines, hotels, cruise lines and car rental companies, say some people in Spain, Italy, France and Switzerland still lack such passports.

However, the pair of 17-year olds lacked proper passports and clothing and had to return to the Netherlands.

Unofficial transits are believed to be more common, as many locals lack passports needed to cross the pass legally.

Representative John F. Tierney, Democrat of Massachusetts, said he was worried about exempting Mexican visitors and extending the deadline for foreigners who lack computer-coded passports.

Morton and Helen Sobell had fled to Mexico in 1950 with their infant son, Mark, and her daughter, trying to find passage to Europe but lacking passports.

The children's parents, some of them lacking passports, were scrambling today to prepare the paperwork needed to travel to the crash site in Germany.

The country lacks its own currency, passports and even an accurate roll of its citizenry.

The State Department estimates that 73 percent of Americans now lack passports.

Between March and July 1933, 85,937 people living in Moscow were arrested and deported because they lacked passports; 4,776 people living in Leningrad were also deported.