(no subject)

[randomness]

Australasians have this factoid they toss around about Americans. "Only twenty percent of Americans," they say in a shocked tone, "have a passport!"

Now, I personally think everyone should have a passport, but this misses an important detail that so far no Australasian I have heard say this has known:

Americans can probably go to twenty countries or political units without a passport.

I pointed this out to one of them and it really took the wind out of their sails. I encourage anyone who gets this factoid tossed at them to provide this list, which I compiled by looking at the Foreign Entry Requirements list, June 2003.

ANTIGUA AND BARBUDA, ARUBA, BAHAMAS, BARBADOS, BERMUDA, CANADA, DOMINICA, DOMINICAN REPUBLIC, GRENADA, JAMAICA, MEXICO, MICRONESIA, NETHERLANDS ANTILLES, PALAU, PANAMA, SAINT KITTS AND NEVIS, SAINT LUCIA, ST. PIERRE, SAINT VINCENT AND THE GRENADINES, VIRGIN ISLANDS, British, WEST INDIES, British, WEST INDIES, French.

I was wrong. It's 22. To make the comparison meaningful to an Australasian, let them imagine the following as an analogy: they wouldn't need a passport to go to most of the South Pacific islands (Tonga, Samoa, French Polynesia, etc.), Australia, New Zealand, Indonesia, and possibly Thailand.

I still think everyone should get a passport, but the "only 20% of Americans have a passport" factoid is a cheap shot, lacking an understanding of just how many places (North America, most of the Caribbean, and parts of the Pacific) Americans can go with no more than photo ID and proof of citizenship.

Comments

Re: Of course

[r-ness.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I'm not going to touch this part, because then it would devolve into a conversation about how awful Australians have been to their indigenous people. New Zealanders have been better to the Maori, but the treatment of Australian Aborigines was astonishingly bad, even by North American standards. A recent editorial in an Australian newspaper after a race riot in an Aboriginal ghetto in Sydney brought up how life expectancy for indigenous peoples in New Zealand, Canada, and the United States had improved in the last generation, but not in Australia.

I thought, "Gee, that's the first time I've heard the Americans being held up as a good example with regard to their treatment of indigenous people".