Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
or those married to foreign nationals. The tens of thousands who return
to their ancestral homeland or simply move overseas for other personal
reasons are also not counted. How many Americans actually are residing
abroad? While the exact number is unknown, the Association of Americans
Resident Overseas (AARO) places the estimate at between 1 and 6 million.
The lower estimate cannot be correct. The census numbers list nearly 1 mil-
lion residents of foreign countries. Recent estimates indicate approximately
140,000 university-level students living abroad. Certainly an additional
several hundred thousand Americans are living and working abroad for
private corporations, not to mention the hundreds of thousands of hyphen-
ated Americans returning to their native country. The actual number, there-
fore, is at least in the middle of the estimated range, which means that at
least several million American citizens are currently residing outside of the
continental United States at any given time.
A determination of the numbers of European citizens residing abroad
is even more difficult to compile. Citizens of the United Kingdom (includ-
ing Canadians and Australians) live and travel abroad in great numbers.
The British Ministry of Tourism maintains statistics relative to the travel
habits of British citizens. These statistics show that citizens of the United
Kingdom made more than 58.3 million trips abroad between the years 1997
and 2001. Citizens of Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Greece, and other
countries of Western Europe also make millions of trips abroad each year.
These Americans, Europeans, Australians, and Canadians, regardless
of whom they work for or why they are living abroad, face many challenges
in adjusting to life outside of their native lands. Often they are over-
whelmed by the necessity of communicating in another language, adapt-
ing themselves to local customs, and living in a society devoid of many of
the modern conveniences we take for granted. They also must face the
prospect that, in many parts of the world, being an American or European
citizen exposes them to a grave and very real danger of death or serious
injury. Westerners abroad are increasingly at risk of being harmed or
worse and have begun to focus on their physical safety more than at any
time in our history. They have all begun to ask what they can and should
do to prevent becoming another statistic.
Employees of the U.S. federal government and their dependents have
an advantage; they receive at least some training regarding personal secu-
rity matters. All government personnel, prior to being posted in a foreign
country, must attend the Security Overseas Seminar given by the U.S.
