Will American Expats Like Me Feel Free to Continue Travelling Abroad?
Botrugno, Salento, Puglia, Italy, April 21st, 2025.
Salaroche

Now that the whole world has seen the deranged, hostile, ugly face of the Trump Administration, many of us expat Americans are growing concerned about the repercussions such negative US stance might entail at the International level.

According to the Henley Passport Index (see here) we Americans still enjoy visa-free entry to 183 countries in the world, thereby ranking US Passports in the No. 9 position, below No.1 Singapore (193 countries), No.2 South Korea and Japan (190 countries) and even below No.3 France, Ireland, Spain, and Italy (189 countries).

However, if the Trump Administration were to continue treating Europe with a contempt that borders on enmity, how long before those European guys stop granting us a 3-month visa-free entry across Europe?

I have been to 6 different countries in Africa for months at a time in each of them, how well can I expect them to continue treating us there now that American assistance of all kinds will be halted and now that all “non-essential” consulates and Embassies will be closed in many of the 50 countries in that continent?

Most importantly, how safe will we non-Maga expats feel visiting US Consulates and Embassies abroad when most foreign service officers including career diplomats will soon be replaced with individuals whose political views are “aligned with the president’s foreign policy vision”, meaning Trump loyalists?

These concerns I’m expressing here are not based solely on the events that have unfolded recently in America. These apprehensions have been growing over the past few months in the minds of many Americans who, like me, have been living and travelling abroad for some time.

Sadly, our growing alarm can now be substantiated by some articles that appeared in a couple of major news outlets this past April 20th (see here and here) As those articles clearly corroborate, the changes the Trump administration intends to enforce in the coming months are indeed as ominous and as deep and broad as some of us expected them to be.

Theirs is a methodic, deep, extensive, incremental plan to transform the whole machinery of the American government all the way from its ideological foundations, to who do they intend to form alliances with, how much they intend to promote and uphold Democratic principles at world level, and even what kind of artistic expressions they intend to associate with and promote.

It is encouraging to see how a good number of Americans are taking to the streets to express their rejection of the current administration’s unnecessary, uncalled-for, asinine dismantling of the institutions of government of the United States, BUT IT IS NOT NEARLY ENOUGH.

It is imperative that elected government officials like Senators, Congresspeople, Governors, Attorneys General and the like stand up and unanimously condemn this open onslaught on American Democracy and the American Rule of Law. Tens of thousands of people protesting in the streets will never be enough. Not even hundreds of thousands will do.

WE NEED MILLIONS OF PROTESTERS and we need them NOW, before the electoral systems across the country are staffed with Trump loyalists that will make sure no non-Maga candidates at any level of government will be elected ever again.

Look around you, America, this is no longer a matter of reading the writings on the wall. This is no longer a question of ideological rhetorics or traditional leftwing-rightwing political disagreements. The ongoing process for dismantling the whole American system of government started being implemented in January 20th 2025 and keeps gaining momentum as we speak.

This is all up to you, America. There is NO cavalry coming to your rescue. Either you pull yourself up by your own bootstraps or it’s game over.

NOTE: I Sincerely encourage you to please read the Newspaper articles I’m referring to in this Commentary, as if even only half the changes mentioned there get implemented, the damage those changes would inflict on American Foreign relations and the destabilizing effect that would have upon the world order may well be irreparable. To read those articles, please click here and here.

Salaroche