The figures are probably correct, but your interpretation is faulty. These days, US passports are good for 10 years. Thus, about 1/4 of the US population has one. To Europeans this may sound like an astonishingly low figure, but it's a big country, and a US citizen can visit Mexico and Canada without one. The duration has been rising - my first passport, issued in 1965, was good for only two years. This was later bumped to 5, and then to 10. Even so, at one time I had to visit an embassy to get extra pages for visa stamps stapled in. Peter Trei
-----Original Message----- From: Brown, R Ken [SMTP:brownrk1@texaco.com]
Surely these figures are an order of magnitude too low? Is it really true that only one in 30 or 40 US residents has a passport?
Year - # US Passports Issued - # Internet Hosts 1992 - 3,282,488 - 727,000 1993 - 4,207,716 - 1,313,000 1994 - 4,895,151 - 2,217,000 1995 - 5,263,989 - 4,852,000 1996 - 5,547,693 - 9,472,000 1997 - 6,295,003 - 16,146,000