No need to travel
From Jason Boatright
Sir: I enjoyed reading Michael Moorcock’s article ‘Why I am becoming an American’ (15 April). However, he referred without comment to one of the strange criticisms that Europeans sometimes make of us: that few Americans hold passports, implying that we are close-minded xenophobes unwilling to see exotic places and people.
In fact, our reluctance to obtain passports is well founded. If we want to ski, we can go to Colorado, Vermont or British Columbia. To visit a tropical beach we can go to Florida; desert, Arizona; the Arctic, Alaska; quaint towns in somewhat foreign places, south Louisiana or the Mexican border; massive cities and all they offer, New York or California.
One can travel no more than 100 miles south of London without a passport; but a Chicagoan could go all the way to the Guatemalan border, several thousand miles away, with nothing more than an Illinois driver’s licence.
Jason Boatright Austin, Texas
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