This paper examines the effects of future introduction of the European Travel Information and Authorisation System (ETIAS), a restrictive travel policy scheduled to be implemented in 2024 by the EU, on citizens’ perceptions of state legitimacy towards their country of origin. Drawing on system justification theory (SJT), this paper argues that ETIAS will enhance citizens’ feeling of inescapability from their country of origin – a situational factor known to enhance system justification – and in turn lead to higher reported levels of state legitimacy. To test this hypothesis, this paper relies on a survey experiment conducted on a student sample in Serbia (N=308). To frame ETIAS within the wider context of emigration, treated participants learn about ETIAS and are informed that people emigrate from Serbia due to better/worse economic/political conditions abroad/at home in treatment 1 and 2, respectively. The results suggest an overall positive effect of both treatments across most of the outcome variables, although the effect is statistically significant at p<0.05 only for the legitimacy of the law and the tax authority and under the first treatment condition. These effects remain even after controlling for school shooting, an unexpected event which occurred during data gathering and understood to pose as system threat - an additional situational factor known to enhance system justification. Thus, by relying on the micro-level explanation grounded in SJT, this research suggests that restrictive travel policies might affect the feeling of inescapability and in turn increase the perceptions of legitimacy at home.