Definitely true. I live out of my home country and have traveled internationally since I was very young, so it never occurred to me that some don't see a passport as a necessity. A good friend of mine in the UK wanted to go on holiday with her boyfriend, so they went to apply for a passport for him...as neither his grandparents nor his parents had ever had one, and his grandparents didn't even have birth certificates (poor, rural community) it took them almost a year of constant bureaucracy! Taught me a lesson about the importance of doing this before you "need" it.