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Comment by parfe | Hacker News Reader

You don't think these US citizens in Canada ever vacation elsewhere? Did you see Canada deploying troops to Egypt during their revolution to evacuate Canadian citizens?

Canada issued a travel warning. America deployed Marines. Which passport would you wave around if you were stuck in Cairo?

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Of course this is circular reasoning. It's precisely because America deploys Marines everywhere that Americans NEED to be rescued. Their country's actions make them targets.

If you were visiting another country and ended up in the middle of a civil war, you would probably want Marines to extract you even if you were from a country that doesn't 'make you a target.'

In general, Americans have been seen as targets for a long time (even when foreign relations were good) because they were seen as 'rich foreigners.' My grandpa would even say that when going back to Poland to visit family, there were a lot of people that were just looking for hand-outs that assumed he was rich because he was an American (he was not wealthy by any stretch of the imagination).

If I were stuck in Cairo I would just drive to the airport by myself, where my country has organized flights to extract the citizens. No problem at all. If you live in a neutral country that does not attack other countries for fun, people around the world are quite friendly to you.

And even the sitation in Cairo wasn't as bad as reported in the media (at least according to what I've heard from the people who've been stuck there).

LOL. You know what the riots in Cairo were about, right?

Unless I'm mistaken, it had nothing to do with the US. Why did it send in Marines?

You should pay better attention:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/crisis-in-egypt/go...

And Libya:

http://www.comfec-cefcom.forces.gc.ca/pa-ap/fs-ev/2011/02/28...

And even Lebanon:

http://www.ctv.ca/CTVNews/World/20060919/evacuation_tab_0609...

> Which passport would you wave around if you were stuck in Cairo?

The Canadian one, obviously. For the same reasons as numerous Americans sew Canadian flag patches to their backpacks when traveling in foreign countries.

What do you think that ratio of American citizens from the USA to American citizens from Canada was in Cairo? I'd venture that the Americans vacationing from the US out-numbered those from Canada. Just sayin' that the number of dual-citizens living in Canada that require US marines to evacuate them during serious situations in another country is probably so small that the funding for it is a rounding error.

From what I hear from Americans abroad, it's an easier life to suggest that they're Canadian : Less hostility.

I dislike this advice. The best way to show that Americans aren't dicks is to say you're American (if asked) and don't be a dick. I've made a few friends abroad who weren't going to talk to me at first because of the stereotypes about Americans.

But in the GP's case ("Which passport would you wave around if you were stuck in Cairo?") you're not really out to make friends, just survive.

> Which passport would you wave around if you were stuck in Cairo?

If I had dual citizenship with Canada and the US? I would be waving around the Canadian passport and making sure that anyone searching me never found my US passport.

Being a US Citizen is a HUGE liability when you are in various unstable parts of the world where there is a huge hatred for the United States, right or not.

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