(Newswire.net — July 2, 2018) — What to expect from a nation whose citizens never left a country? They don’t know for better, their horizon is narrow and their social and political views come through a single prism and can be distorted. But is this the case with US citizens?
A shocking report that only 10% of Americans own a passport surfaced at the end of the last century which was not so long ago. It explained things by citing causes ranging from the lack of interest of an average American for world topics to a bad foreign policy, even voting decisions. The report leads to a conclusion that 90% of Americans never step a foot in another country.
Although the report statistic is true, the conclusions it comes to are all wrong. The fact is that most Americans traveling abroad are visiting neighbor countries Mexico and Canada and up to recently they needed no passport to travel to those countries.
With the implementation of the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative (WHTI) that the United States government began implementing in 2004, it is absolutely mandatory for US citizens to show passports when traveling abroad by airplane, regardless of destination.
The goal of such a move is to strengthen border security.
If traveler is crossing a border by land, however, a passport is not needed, any travel related document is valid. But when you are returning to the US, border officers may and will ask for a passport so it is smarter that you carry it along.
So, the rest of the world jumped to a conclusion when presented with mind-blowing statistics which is quite opposite when you look at the passport owning statistic from any other Western country that goes as high as 80%, even for EU countries who ditched border check points. In 2011, the percentage of UK citizens who own a passport reached 76%.
The report that only 10% of Americans own a passport was true in 1994. However, this percentage is now more than 46% and it is growing. When the law tightened after 9/11 people needed passports to leave the country. Within three years, the number of US passports in circulation had grown by 20 million, the BBC reports.
According the BBC this rise, however, is not only due the WHTI. The report says a millennials would rather put their money into experiences and travel rather than invest in consumer products.