(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

[ex-misschili604.livejournal.com]

Good point, and thanks for sharing the numbers. Similarly, with regard to the 'Americans only speak one language!' cheap shot, how many Australians speak anything other than English?

[r-ness.livejournal.com]

Similarly, with regard to the 'Americans only speak one language!' cheap shot, how many Australians speak anything other than English?

Yeah, people clearly don't pull this one on me. And if they did, I'd switch to Mandarin. :)

[colinmac.livejournal.com]

I was thinking about this recently. I mean, yeah, I agree that Americans should learn other languages, but the next time any Europeans give me shit about it, I'll be pointing out that English constitutes every language spoken natively within 500 miles of my home. If it weren't for Quebec, that number would be 1500 miles.
I studied Spanish in high school and German in college. If I lived in London, it'd be a $30-$50, one-hour plane ride to go to either country. I might actually get to practice them. More to the point, if I wanted to go more than a couple hundred miles in any direction, I'd need to learn a new language. From my home in DC, I can go 3000 miles and hit nothing but English speakers.
Again, not defending monolingual...ism(?) or insularity; just putting it in perspective.

[hammercock.livejournal.com]

Wow, I didn't realize I could go to so many places without a passport, and I'm American. :-}

As I'm sure you well know, there are a lot of people out in the rest of the world who like to take easy, cheap shots at Americans for all kinds of things. I can't remember whether this was when I was 15 and in the South Pacific, or 22 and in Turkey, but I had been chatting on a bus with some Scandinavian guy. He opined that it was shameful that there wasn't mandatory health care for all Americans on a par with what so many European countries have. I agreed that it was a very sad thing, and then asked him how many people lived in his country? Eight million or so? Uh-huh. Dude, we have at least two cities as big as your whole freaking country! Come back to us when you've figured out how to make this work for a nation of (at the time) 250,000,000 that is also divided into 51 distinct political units, and then we'll talk.

[elthar.livejournal.com]

Actually, seeing this list is rather timely for me, because later this year we're going to have a project in Antigua and Barbuda. I have a (well-traveled) passport myself, but I've been hassling my assistant to get one too, because we're thinking of sending him at the end of the project. It's good to know I have a backup plan. (Not that I'm going to stop hassling him, because we have projects in more distant places as well...)

[r-ness.livejournal.com]

Here's the relevant info for Antigua and Barbuda:

"Passport or proof of U.S. citizenship or voter’s registration card, along with picture ID, required, return/onward ticket, and proof of funds needed for tourist stay of up to 6 months. Contact the Embassy of Antigua and Barbuda, 3216 New Mexico Ave. NW, Washington, DC 20016 (202/362-5122/5166/5211) for further information."

But yeah, keep hassling him. :)

Safe travels!

Of course

[mryt-maat.livejournal.com]

That's not even counting the 500+ different political units embedded in the United States. Some Nations even issue their own passports.

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".