According to the State Department, about 30% of Americans hold a passport. Compared to 60% for Canada and 75% for the UK. Now, traveling internationally for Americans is different than for people in the UK, as foriegn destinations are much further for us, so all Americans face the same distance issue.
What does the 30% stat say about Americans? Does it suggest we have a myopic view of the world? If we could see the stat based on political affiliation, what would that indicate? I cannot find any stats on the latter.
I have no factual basis for this but I would bet a dollar that Liberals hold more passports than Conservatives do. As an example, when I lived in West Texas, Europe was thought of as very different place with a real gap in culture, food and language not as a place that is modern, shares western cultural values and McDonalds.
I would bet that you would find out that the people with passports are comprised of mostly those who have a need to or can afford to travel to other countries.
I’m not sure myopic is the right word, but plenty of Americans think that a Texan taking a vacation in Oregon is qualitatively comparable to a German taking a vacation in Greece. I think there’s a tendency for Americans to think that the country is a lot more diverse than it really is.
(For the nitpickers, I’m not saying that the U.S. is homogenous. I’m saying that many people want to believe that regional differences are more significant than they really are.)
Yes, probably. I mean, perhaps the proportion of Americans who, say, backpack around India might tend liberal, but there must be a large number of conservative-leaning folks who travel for business regularly.
I am an American living in China, and most of the Americans that I meet in my travels around Asia are Democrats.
My friends that travel to visit me in Asia are Democrats, while the friends and family that are Republicans tell me that it is just too difficult, scary, or different.
Door to door, it takes about 34 hours travel to go from my home in USA to my home in China , so I do understand why some people would not want to make the trip.
Let’s see, Republicans would be more likely travel for business while Democrats would be more likely to travel for pleasure, right?
I’m not affiliated with any party, but I have a passport - I wonder how many others out there are like me?
Is political affiliation more significant than income? I wonder if passport holders are evenly distributed throughout the country or concentrated in certain metropolitan areas. I wonder if age is a factor - I got my first passport when I was in high school and I’ve held one on and off for the last 40-some years.
Two, or three, or more hours in an airplane in America typically means that you are still in America.
Two or three hours in an airplane from Germany or England typically means you are traveling internationally.
It is much cheaper and faster for Europeans to travel outside their own country.
The Europeans that I have met that talk about international travel for Americans typically do not realize that the USA is such a large country.
I’ve crawled over the rocky shores of Maine, explored caves in Appalachia, watched wild horses run in North Carolina, lounged on lazy beaches in Florida, and traveled through swamps in Louisiana. I’ve seen the sand hills of Nebraska, hill country in Texas, the black hills in South Dakota, and redwoods in California. I’ve gazed in awe at the Grand Canyon and the Great Lakes.
America may not be culturally diverse, but there’s a hell of a lot to see here. I’ve been overseas as well, but it’s a lot more expensive, and I don’t feel that I’ve run out of stuff to see and do right here.
And I’ve been to 48 states and roughly the same number of countries. I’ve seen the vineyards nestled among oak trees in the rolling foothills of Northern California, and the vineyards nestled among oak trees in the rolling foothills of Stellenbosch, South Africa. They are quite different experiences.
No one is saying that by seeing all of the US you’ve seen the equivilent of the rest of the world just that you can travel and see many new things without leaving the country.
I’ve only ever traveled to the US, Canada and Caribbean mostly due to cost and time available but if I lived in the UK, France or Italy I would definitely be an international traveller.
I would guess that the same 30% or less of Europeans have been to North America for the same reasons.
I don’t see why there is this need to politicize the idea of holding a passport. It’s more of a rich vs poor thing, and if rich correlates with Republican and poor correlates with Democrats, then probably more Republicans than Democrats hold passports. I have lots of Conservative friends who also happen to be fairly well off and can’t think of one who hasn’t travelled outside the country. They travel because they have money and they can, not because they are conservative.
I can see the thinking about not feeling the need to leave the US. I can meet people from just about every nation and ethnic group, eat just about every regional cuisine, see practically every landscape, and experience almost all climates without ever leaving the confines of CA, and that is not even counting the rest of the US. It is a huge place and you can experience a lot by never leaving home.
However, I do wonder that by never seeing, first hand, how other people really live, day-to-day, in other parts of the world, there may not be and appreciation of their struggle, and only view their own as important. Also, more darkly, I suspect never leaving the safety and comfort of our own shores leads people to view people in other countries as distant and sub-human, and more easy to justify agressive posturing as we see some politicians with their tough talk about the ME, for example. John Mace, this is one of the reasons I ask about politics; I was not trying to politicize it outright. Republicans appear more hawkish than the democrats, so I am exploring if there is a connection to worldliness, or lack thereof, in this appearance.
It’s not like a German traveling to Greece for vacation is doing it to expand his or her world view. I’m sure they just want to sit on the beach, eat Gyros, and look at the Parthenon.
Likewise, when my college friends and I made the 5 hour trip to Windsor when we were 19 to get (legally) drunk and hang out in strip clubs, we weren’t exactly expanding our world view either.
Crossing a border doesn’t really mean much except that in America, you’re probably spending a lot more money to go on vacation.
True that. A country like Australia, which is distant from a lot of destinations, still has a lot of travelers. Stop by Yosemite any summer weekend and you will see and hear them in droves. Distance and cost appears not to be as much of a constraint for them, at least for the younger Australians, as it is for Americans. And yes, I agree not everyone traveling has the same agenda of enrichhment, and would rather get drunk or get laid as their primary objective. I would suspect that has to do with age.