What countries allow anyone into their country
Executive summary
No sovereign state today maintains a truly unconditional, world‑wide “anyone may enter” policy; research and mainstream reporting conclude there are no countries with fully open borders for everyone as of recent years [1] [2]. What does exist are regional free‑movement zones and bilateral arrangements — most notably Europe’s Schengen Area and the UK–Ireland Common Travel Area — that abolish routine internal border checks for members while keeping controls at external frontiers [3] [4] [5].
1. Why “allow anyone in” is rarer than the phrase implies
The plain language question conflates free movement among partners with global open access; scholars and compilers caution that “open borders” refers to travel without routine checks, not the absence of immigration law, and no country currently practices unregulated global entry for all nationalities [2] [1]. Sources explaining the term stress degrees of openness — from visa waivers to de jure open borders — and note that fully open, worldwide borders are effectively nonexistent in modern practice [5] [6].
2. Europe’s Schengen model: the closest practical approximation
The Schengen Area is the clearest real‑world example of borders that are “open” between multiple countries: 29 states (25 EU members plus Iceland, Norway, Switzerland and Liechtenstein) have abolished systematic internal border checks while enforcing shared external controls and visa rules for third‑country nationals [3] [4]. Reporting highlights that Schengen members still require visas or electronic authorizations for non‑visa‑exempt nationalities and maintain systems like SIS, VIS, and the Entry‑Exit System to detect overstays — meaning movement is free for residents of member states, not “anyone” in the world [3] [4].
3. Bilateral exceptions and micro‑states that complicate the headline
Separate arrangements such as the UK–Ireland Common Travel Area create passport‑free movement between specific states without implying global openness, and some European microstates (Andorra, Monaco, San Marino, Vatican City) function de facto within Schengen despite formal statuses [4] [6]. Advocates for open borders map out these and similar relaxations to argue for liberalization, but even pro‑migration groups acknowledge these are bounded agreements with external entry controls intact [7] [6].
4. The political and practical limits to universal openness
Commentators and analysts emphasize why countries resist blanket openness: security, welfare capacity, political backlash, and concerns about social cohesion are repeatedly cited as constraints on adopting global open borders [8] [1] [2]. Reporting shows the debate is ideologically divided — libertarian and some left voices support much freer movement while nativist and centrist actors push back — and real‑world policymakers instead pursue managed free‑movement pacts or stricter external controls rather than unconditional accession for all [5] [9].
5. What readers should take away and where reporting is limited
In short, no country today officially “allows anyone” in without limitation; policy practice relies on a mixture of free movement for defined populations and controlled external borders for everyone else, exemplified by Schengen and the Common Travel Area [1] [3] [4]. Sources used here do not map every bilateral visa waiver or the rare cases of de facto lax enforcement in fragile states, so this account does not claim exhaustive coverage of undocumented or temporary local practices not documented in the cited materials [7].