On Passport Privilege
Issue #25: An appreciation post for my lifeline and most loyal adventure buddy.
Hi there, I’m Emily! 🙋🏼♀️ For those who are new, here’s a quick catch-up:
Five years ago, I packed my life into a suitcase and hit the road, moving to a new city every few months. Now I write stories about the quirks and realities of living abroad, intertwined with my attempt to create a happy, meaningful life.
On Passport Privilege
Fill out Form DS-82. Get a hideously sterile photo taken. Pay $130. Blindly drop your existing passport into the mail and hope like hell you get it back in 6 to 8 weeks.
Like the procrastinator I often am, I put off renewing my soon-to-expire passport until the very last second, as I correctly assumed it would be a bit of headache — especially with the added complexity of doing it while abroad. There was conflicting information on the archaic U.S. State Department website, the need to find a functioning printer in the year 2024, and a 45-minute wait under the blazing sun out front of the only DHL kiosk in town. There was also a full three week period where the status of my package was listed as “mailed” yet nobody at the U.S. Consulate in Guadalajara nor my DHL tracking number could tell me where it actually was.
As scenes of being permanently stranded in Mexico for the rest of my life raced through my mind (which, to be fair, actually seemed pretty great) my trusty sidekick finally resurfaced, alongside a flashy, higher security, brand new replacement.
I felt naked for the six weeks that I was without her — my lifeline and most loyal adventure buddy, that is. She’s usually on a tight leash, tucked away in a specific pocket of my backpack which I constantly pat down to make sure is still zippered. Besides my favorite red tank top, she’s the only one who has accompanied me on every single one of my journeys around the world during the past several years. Her pages are a scrapbook of great memories (like the colorful Chilean stamp that welcomed me south of the equator for the first time) and funny stories (like the time I accidentally spent just 7 minutes inside the United Arab Emirates).
Still, I often take her for granted.
When my flight from Tunisia touched down in Barcelona a few years ago, I was whisked through immigration with a smile, a stamp and a “bienvenidos!” Meanwhile, the young mother and her two adorable children who I sat next to on the plane were immediately sequestered by armed guards — their Libyan passports needing to be scrutinized with a magnifying glass before they could even leave the jet bridge.
In early September 2021, upon re-entering the U.S. after a summer spent bouncing around the Greek Islands, I turned a corner in Washington DC’s Dulles Airport to be met by hundreds of Afghan refugees that had just fled Kabul. They were sprawled out on the floor in the same tattered clothes they’d been in for days, patiently waiting their turn to begin the long, arduous process of being admitted into the U.S. — and these were the lucky few that had made it onto an evacuation flight.
A few months back, I arrived to Paralimni Marina on the southeastern tip of Cyprus for a day of wakeboarding and fun on a friend’s boat. On one side of the marina, flashy catamarans and luxurious yachts waiting to be taken out into glittering turquoise waters. On the other, rickety wooden boats bearing Arabic lettering tossed into an impound lot, which had been abandoned off the coast by Syrian asylum seekers desperately trying to escape their war-torn home.
Just a few days later, I was stuck in terrible traffic trying to reach the taxi drop-off point at Larnaca International Airport. It was the morning of October 8, 2023 and the terminal was swarmed with search and rescue teams, medical staff and the Cypriot National Guard. I was heading off to a week of stuffing my face with sushi in Tokyo. They were heading off to the front lines of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict.
Sometimes these reality checks smack you right in the face. But more often than not, passport privilege also sneaks into our everyday conversation and behavior. And it’s way more than just breezing through immigration and border control upon arrival to a different country. It’s in the casual way we talk about the places we go, as if the world is a checkable to-do list, always accessible without much effort needed.
“Oh, the trip to Spain fell through? Let’s just hop over to France instead!”
“I really want to visit the Philippines, but I don’t like working my U.S.-based remote job from that time zone, so I still haven’t been. Maybe next year!”
“The dollar is really strong against the Argentinian peso right now, so it’s a great time to visit Buenos Aires!”
As a gringo living in a foreign country that has welcomed me with open arms, while I’m certainly not perfect, I try to keep this sort of chatter to a minimum and I wish others — particularly my fellow Americans — would too. There’s a tendency among us to overlook the reality of the world or the consequences of our actions. And it's no secret that when we travel or live abroad, we can be a loud, arrogant, ignorant bunch.
All it really takes is some basic self-awareness: The next time you want to mention how cheap something is in a different country, think about why that might be. Don’t assume that since enough people speak English, you can forgo learning the local language. Before complaining about a long wait for your meal, consider whether it’s a cultural difference rather than bad service. Keep this in mind the next time you settle into a café with your expensive laptop, earning in three hours what the person serving your coffee might make in a week. Consider the impact you have buying property where your local friends were born and raised but who are now priced out of the market (wait… do you have any local friends? You should definitely make some if not, it will help with all of the above).
I’ll step off my soapbox now, because importantly, I do believe there is a learning curve to much of this. Whenever I spend time with rookie travelers, it’s always interesting to hear their unfiltered first-time-outside-the-States commentary. But this is what makes travel so important — it allows us to grow, to learn and to gain a better understanding of the world around us. At the risk of treading too far into political waters here (though you can probably imagine which way I lean), it’s also why I become infuriated upon hearing xenophobic comments about those attempting to immigrate — legally or not. It’s no coincidence that close-minded remarks about people simply seeking a more stable, safer life usually come from those whose own passport pages are still blank.
As I continue to publish stories of whimsical travel tales and comparatively unserious personal struggles, I want to stop and acknowledge how fortunate I am to be able to live this life. To have a remote job. To have any job at all. To be able to essentially hand-pick where in the world I want to live. To have arrived at the self-actualization stage of needs, to have won the birthplace lottery and be the owner of a sparkling new blue passport — and not just any blue passport, but one that’s a specific shade of navy and has an ugly little eagle on the front of it — even though right now, it’s from a place that I’ve chosen not to call home.
Recommended related posts:
To All of the Places I Will Never Visit — Pouring one out for all of the places that will inevitably remain untouched on my bucket list forever.
A Love Letter to Charm City — A Weekend in The Greatest City in America™
Emily, I absolutely love this post. Travel travel travel. That is my mantra too thank you so much for reminding me of the privilege that I have as well to be able to decide when where and how I travel and not have any grief about it. Thank you for a lovely article and I look forward to reading more of your stuff soon.