I agree. And with the vacation thing too - the fact that a lot of Americans only get 10 days of vacation a year is a factor. I have family in Texas, Florida, Virginia and Oregon. If I use my vacation days (and air miles and dollars) to see my grandkids, I’m not going to be able to jet off to Monte Carlo all that often.
I think this is more of a rich vs. poor thing and you should be careful about not being elitist in making assumptions about people who don’t have passports. Poor people and black people in urban areas tend to vote Democrat. How many poor black families from urban areas do you think have passports and have gone backpacking around Europe or Asia? And how distasteful would you find it if someone speculated that a low income urban black person was not worldly enough to understand international politics because they had never been privileged enough to go on an overseas trip?
The segment of conservatives who are poor rural whites probably don’t often have passports, just as poor black urbanite liberals probably don’t often have passports, but I think it is quite elitist to jump from that to saying that people of either group are necessarily not worldly or informed.
Myself, I have a passport - but mainly because I used to live near the Canadian border and would travel there at times. I don’t have time or money to go overseas yet though I’d like to in the future.
Yes, your point is well taken. But what I am suggesting is that I cannot see poor black urbanite liberals without passports suggesting rendering solutions to worldly issues that invoke the use of US military force, but I can easily see poor rural white conservatives without passports suggesting it. My point being that if you know more about the people of some place, you are less likely to want to attack their country and see them as “enemies”. International travel is just one way to learn about other people, but I am not suggesting it’s the only way.
I agree, tho, that someone’s station in society need not determine their world view.
Much cheaper in travel cost AND much cheaper in time AND much cheaper in conflicting emotions.
A flight to Puerto Rico or the US Virgin Islands is about $200 and takes about three hours and doesn’t even require a passport; a flight to Cambodia is about $1500 and takes 17 hours, assuming no stopovers. Right off the bat you lose two entire days to travel, a prospect that appeals to few Americans planning the relatively short trips Americans are accustomed to take (about 10 days max). And while in Puerto Rico/USVI, you don’t have to wonder if you’re a very unwelcome visitor because of your country’s relatively recent propensity to massacre the locals, or try to untangle your feelings about Our National Clusterfuck,* and/or what your father did in it, from your relaxation.
*AKA The Vietnam War
Not so. There are two other countries over here, y’know. That’s without counting the islands. The populous states that border those countries tend to be Democratic, and the citizens likely to go to Canada and Mexico - Canadians and Mexicans - are more likely to be Democrats as well. So I’d venture a guess that more Ds hold passports than Rs.
Both. I have money to travel but I’m not rich, so I’d rather take two trips and stay at a Super 8 than one trip and stay at the Hilton. As I’ve alluded to in another thread though, I’ve stayed at one too many godawful low priced motels, so I’m starting to shift to lower mid-priced. As for food, again I don’t like spending money, but also my taste in food is burgers, tacos, and pizza. I have zero interest in seeing if I’d like brains or snail whether a French resteraunt here or in France. If I were in France I’d want to spend my time seeing the Eiffel Tower and the Louvre, not sitting down for hours and spending lots of money in a fancy resteraunt. I’m not trying to place a value judgement on what other people eat, just trying to say I have no interest in personally trying it.
It’s only very recently that you needed a passport to travel to these locations, though.
The Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative only started requiring passports when traveling by air in 2007, and only started requiring them for all border crossings starting in 2009.
Except for the last 5 years, passports have only been required for intercontinental travel. All the nearby countries to the US could be visited without one.
Just want to chime in that you don’t have to be exceptionally rich to travel overseas, you just have to prioritize it. If you buy the $3 Subway sub instead of a $6.00 lunch and skip a $2.50 coffee daily, you can easily finance a month long trip in a cheap country (South or Southeast Asia, China) or a couple weeks in a mid-range country (much of Africa and Latin America, some Eastern Europe/Central Asia.) It may not be your top priority, but it’s within reach of all but the most destitute.
I like the charts on this site - Passports are correlated with income and education among other things:
http://www.creativeclass.com/_v3/creative_class/2011/03/16/america’s-great-passport-divide/
It does not answer the political party question, but does have some fun stuff in it.
That is an interesting link, and the kind of thing I was looking for - thanks!!
How often are these trips and how many people are going?
Absolutely. But if you are rich, you are much more likely to consider the idea of overseas travel. I would not be surprised if you looked at the 18 - 25 year old demographic, you might see more liberals than conservatives traveling out of the country. That’s when most of us do our backpacking around the world trips. Looking at the full spectrum, though, you got grandma and gramps from suburbia going on their cruises to the islands where they are going to need passports, and not so many backpackers.
It doesn’t answer the political party question directly, but the correlation is extremely strong. The states with the fewest passports are all in the Bible Belt and Appalachia, all deep red states. If you expand the criteria a bit (<40% with passports) you get one outlier (New Mexico) and a couple of swing states, but the map is almost a perfect match with the Presidential voting map. Alaska I assume has a ton of passport holders because they cannot get to the rest of the country by land without crossing an international border.
There are a lot of African-Americans in the deep south who probably don’t have passports and thus skew the stats a bit, but the central midwest is lily-white and Republican and they don’t have them either.
That brings a question to my mind that’s a total hijack. Does a U.S. citizen who is a permanent resident of Alaska need a passport to travel overland from his/her home state to (let’s say) Washington State ?
I know that Americans need a passport to enter Canada but this would seem to be a different situation since the traveler was effectively traveling intra-nationally (only within his/her own country) but for the fact that they would need to traverse Canada if they had to (or even chose to) travel overland.
It seems that it would be rather like the legal notion of easements.
First of all, a medium coffee at Starbucks is $1.90, less at other places, and anyone drinking coffee on a daily basis should be brewing their own.
Secondly, I already skip coffee and lunch to afford the adult education courses that the commercials told me I could afford if I did so. I’m also using my coffee money for charity, to finance my apartment, and to pay for term life insurance. And I didn’t even drink coffee to begin with!
Finally, I need to give up 4 coffees and lunches per day, because I’ll want to bring my wife and kids with me, and my wife doesn’t work because daycare for 2 kids is more than she can earn working. So my one income needs to support 4 people and still be enough to cover travel arrangements for my whole family.
(all examples for illustrative purposes, any resemblance to my actual life is purely a coincidence)
I know your point was just that foreign travel doesn’t have to be expensive. I mean, Rachael Ray already showed us that we can eat for less than $40 a day! But most poor people, even excluding the destitute, aren’t unattached 20-somethings who can skimp on a few things here and there and put together $1500 and then take a couple weeks off of work to gallivant around Borneo. They have families and actual responsibilities, and being able to separate yourself from your responsibilities is a luxury in and of itself. A luxury that I, for one, never appreciated until I realized I didn’t have it anymore.
Regrettably, yes, you need a passport if travelling overland.
Ok, that’s fine. Travel can be difficult and not a priority for very good reasons. But it’s possible, right? It’s totally cool if you are doing other things, but not all travelers are rich and privileged. Some people give up a lot- often love, stability, kids, property and money- to make their dream a reality.
America is a huge place and until recently we didn’t need a passport to travel to our two nearest neighbors, which are both also fairly large countries. I can easily imagine that being the primary reason for the discrepancy, although I’m not sure how much of a mitigating factor the formation of the EU might be.
While Democrats might be more likely to travel abroad recreationally, Republicans might make up for it with business travel.
Why? True, people are speculating about a factual matter, but since they don’t have access to the actual fact itself, why not speculate if it’s a pleasant distraction to do so?
As for me, I find it an interesting question and have sort of monitored the Americans around me for years to see if there are any clear patterns in political views (rather than Dem/Repub). I can’t say that there are - personally I know a few more liberal Democrats, but that is because I’m one myself, and tend to choose friends whose attitudes are compatible with mine. I meet plenty of conservative Republicans, I just don’t hang out with them as much.
Also, while there are a LOT of Republicans among Americans in Indonesia, I do believe that Democrats Abroad is far more active as a social group here in Jakarta. Make of that what you will. (I’d say that maybe Dems like to party more, but I’ve seen enough soused and convivial Republicans to be positive that this can’t be right.)
But that’s not something people in Alaska are actually likely to do, is it? The Anchorage metro area, where most Alaskans live, is around two thousand miles from the Washington border by road. For most intents and purposes, Alaska is an island state just like Hawaii.