“British citizens top list for visa-free travel” (unless they live in Canada)

British citizens top list for visa-free travel – Daily Telegraph

I have to admit that I have never had a problem travelling in Europe using my British passport. Behind the  old iron curtain, too, the words ‘Her Britannic Majesty requests and requires…’ inscribed in the large blue-black passport got me where I wanted to go. (This, fortunately, was always where the authorities wanted me to go.) Travelling in Africa gave me no more difficulty than my Canadian travelling companions experienced, even with one of those new-fangled eurobrit-style passports.

Bermuda was a problem, which surprised me as the country is one of the few remaining British colonies. Apparently, my British passport could not be valid because it had been issued in Ottawa. And isn’t Ottawa in Canada, not the United Kingdom? After an hour of inquisition in a small room with a large, framed Bible text hanging on the wall reminding me that the Lord was my shepherd, I finally became sheepish enough to be allowed in. And yes, the holiday was worth the hassle.

It might well be harder for me to get into Bermuda now as British passports for ex-pats living in Canada no longer come from Ottawa. They are now issued in Washington, DC. Yes, really! We CanBrits have to go cap-in-hand to the USA for our travel documents, paying in American dollars (not much of a problem, I admit, as their currency is tanking) and providing all the materials to US specifications. But that’s not all! After having gone to Washington to get my British passport (you can do it by mail — but not online — and the website is not very helpful) the Americans then require me to have a visa to use it in order to get into the USA. This makes for a lengthy border-crossing every three months, while the homeland security people fingerprint me and take my photo.

No big deal, really, but a bit humbling for us Brits, who have walked through border crossings all over the world as if we owned them (as we often once did), offering Her Britannic Majesty’s document as one might garlic to a vampyre, and occasionally answering an officer’s question as one might a request from one’s butler. Sic transit gloria mundi, which a schoolboy once translated as a crossing marred by sea-sickness on a sunny Monday.

The USA has a right to control who comes into its country, of course, but reading in this article that as a member of the island race I can go almost anywhere without a visa is not a lot of use when the country we share our longest border with, and which I visit most frequently, requires me to have one.

The world’s longest undefended border? Yes, but not for us Brits.