Quote:
Originally Posted by petkow
Some interesting stats vaguely related to this drift:
Only 27% of US citizens have a passport. Of these a record 320,000 got them in the first 7 days of 2007 due to a new rule that was enforced on Jan 23rd requiring a passport for travel between the US and Canada.
On the flip side I wonder how many Europeans don't have a passport/national ID card?
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Well petkow...you certainly do understand the big difference...in Europe you travel 20 or 30 km and you are in a different country and while the Schengen agreement has cut down on some of the paperwork at frontiers, they still sometimes do ask for identity cards or passports. The relative magnitudes of the border areas are completely different....a much smaller percentage of Americans live within 160 km. of the Canadian or Mexican borders then Canadians to the US border...in the United States if you live in say Atlanta, you are nowhere near an international border where a passport would be necessary. Not many Americans spend their summer breaks in Canada whereas many Canadians, many Canadians, think nothing of buying up property in Florida or Arizona and spending their winters there and although they never technically needed passports, after 9/11 American paranoia increased to such a degree that more and more border crossings especially of Canadians into the United States began checking more closely and it was easier to have a passport although as noted it was not required.