The Benefits Of Holding A Second Passport

Panama is truly a convenient place to live if you want to travel around Latin America. Our flight on Tuesday from Panama City to Santiago, Chile, wasn’t short (at seven hours), but it was painless. On-time departure from Tocumen International…good service from Copa in the air…on-time arrival at Arturo Merino Benitez…then a quick, efficient, and courteous experience with immigration…and no customs experience to speak of (we simply put our bags through an X-ray machine…the guy even came around to lift Kathie’s bag on to the conveyor belt for her with a smile).

Time change of only two hours so no jet lag…and here we are in Santiago.As much as possible, Kathie and I travel using our Irish passports. We made this choice initially because my U.S. passport was running out of clean pages. Having more pages added meant a trip to the U.S. Embassy and a charge of US$85. Seemed like a rip-off to me, when a new passport costs only US$110, so I decided to skip buying extra pages and instead wait until I could renew my passport altogether.

Meanwhile, again, I’d use my Irish passport whenever possible. This means that, when Kathie and I travel together, we’re both Irish. Since we’ve made this transition, the benefits have been many, unpredictable, and usually unexpected.

So, filling out the immigration forms on the flight Tuesday, I referenced our Irish passport information. Turned out to be a fortunate decision.

Arriving at the airport in Santiago, we saw arrows pointing to immigration and began to turn to follow them. As we paused to try to read the signs, an airport agent behind us explained, in Spanish, that the immigration area where we were headed was only for those required to pay the entry fee. We continued reading. The entry fee, the sign explained, is a “reciprocity fee”due from U.S., Canadian, Mexican, Australian, and Albanian citizens. For U.S. citizens, the fee is US$140 per traveler!

Kathie and I looked at each other, held out our Irish passports, and moved farther along to the non-fee line…where the agent greeted us politely and waved us through quickly.

Chile (like more and more countries around the world) charges American citizens coming to visit a visa fee that is, literally, as the sign indicated, a reciprocity fee. The United States charges Chileans a visa fee…so the Chileans return the favor. With Americans and also with others who charge Chilean travelers, including Canadians, Mexicans, Australians, and Albanians (this one we had to wonder about…how many Chileans could be interested in traveling to Albania…and vice versa?).

If the United States stopped charging Chileans a fee to cross U.S. borders, the Chileans would take us off their fee-paying list. Reciprocity.

Note that the fee an American must pay when entering Chile is good for the life of your U.S. passport…not helpful in my case, as I’m about to renew mine. Had I paid the fee this time, I’d have to pay it again upon my return with my new passport.

Brazil requires Americans to get an entry visa before arriving in the country…and they charge a nice fee for the privilege, as well. The fee isn’t enough to make the country rich. Again, it’s imposed because the United States requires Brazilians to obtain a visa, at a cost, to enter the U.S.

Argentina now charges a fee to Americans and Canadians who’d like to travel to that country. More reciprocity.

All of this highlights one benefit of having a second passport. Not that the time and expense of obtaining a second passport is worth saving the US$140 an American must pay to enter Chile. But the ongoing options you enjoy by holding more than one citizenship certainly can be worth the effort.

Ease of travel (not needing a visa to enter Brazil), cost savings (not having to pay a fee to enter Chile or Argentina), and safety advantages (showing an Irish passport rather than a U.S. one in certain travel situations) are all excellent reasons for obtaining a second passport.

In addition, you have the employment and residency advantages, especially with an E.U. passport, which gives the holder the ability to reside and to work in any E.U. country. You still have to register in many cases…as in France, where you need to obtain a carte de sejour, but it’s simply a matter of paperwork (the French live for their paperwork). And, again, with an EU passport you don’t need a work permit to obtain a job in France…or in any other EU member country.

But an EU passport isn’t easy to obtain unless you have the right genealogy (Irish mother or grandmother, for example). Other more easily obtained passports, such as one from Uruguay, don’t come with the multi-country residency and work benefits right now, but I suspect that, over the next decade or so, new multi-country regions of cooperation will emerge in Latin America and perhaps Asia. Mercosur already allows for easier travel and trade among Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, and Brazil.

Of course, holding a U.S. passport has advantages, as well. It’s in the top tier for visa-free or visa-on-entry travel, despite the reciprocity issues with some countries. And if you’re planning a trip to Mongolia, the United States is the only country where you can show up without obtaining a visa in advance of arrival.

Lief Simon