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(via How Many Americans Have a Passport? The Percentages, State by State « Grey’s Blog)

We are not a well-traveled people, are we?

I wouldn’t say that (and I say this as a passported, well-traveled person from Massachusetts).

We’re just a massive country.  If you’re a Brit, and you want a semi-tropical vacation within a three-hour plane ride, you go to Spain, or the Greek Islands, or Majorca.  You have to have a passport to go there.  Americans can go to Florida or Hawaii, sans passport.  Want to visit some major cultural center?  Go to New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, New Orleans, San Francisco (or Boston! woooooo!)  Are any of those Athens or Rome?  Maybe not, but New York, London, and Tokyo are all pretty similar once you’re there long enough.

And that’s just for vacations.  You have a business trip to go on?  Plenty of those are going to be interstate, especially if you’re lower-ranking in your company, because the whole country is pretty much a center of commerce.

And finally, well, there’s the class issue.  If you can’t afford a bus ticket, or gas for your car, you’re not going anywhere, let alone to another country.  It doesn’t surprise me that Mississippi has the lowest rates of passport ownership— it also has the lowest median income, and is the poorest state in the country.

While I love and endorse travel as a fulfilling life experience, I also have an aversion to this strange American inferiority complex we get about things like “having a passport”

I think so many people have passports in those states because of legal immigration - just saying. =)