Battle of the passport-free zones: Schengen vs. The United States

[Brave New World]

Originally Posted by OyCrumbler

Why are you still arguing? The fact is your perception of necessity for being in the Schengen area has little to do with why RoI is not part of it. RoI wants to maintain an open border with NI. It cannot be in the Schengen area and do so as it stands, so it does not.

Schenghen would not stop a free border with NI, the RoI are free to join if they so wish.

The RoI could join Schebghen if they wanted. however there is no point as you need idenmtity details and checks to use the only available transport in to and out of Ireland, and in terms of NI it has a tiny population which is smaller than most medium size cities.

The transport options are basically the plane or a ferry to mainland GB.

I don't know if you have been to an aiport or ferry port recently but they are hardly open borders and have very tight security and checks.

I really don't understand what your point is, as the RoI would gain nothing by joining Schenghen, which is the real reason why they didn't join.

[prospectheightsresident]

I have to be honest, this is tough. Really tough. The Schengen Zone and the US both offer a whole lot and you probably wouldn't go wrong in either as a traveler. That said, considering that I travel for food primarily (and though I love food from both Eastern and Western Europe), I may give the US a slight edge due to the greater variety of ethnic food that I enjoy. Note, this answer is personal to me, and my favorite cuisines are Mexican, Puerto Rican, Ghanaian/Nigerian, Peruvian, Indian, Hawaiian (oh, give me a poke bowl from Poke on Da Run in Pearl City on Oahu any day!), and West Indian/Caribbean. I haven't heard great things about Mexican/Latin food in the Schegen Zone. The UK does have excellent Indian and some solid West African and West Indian places, too, but as mentioned the UK is not a part of the Schegen Zone . . . if it was, my answer may be tipped slightly in the Schegen Zone's favor. Still, while I give the slight edge to the US on cuisine alone, it isn't a hard edge and I don't have strong feelings either way.

I next travel for weather and would prefer to take my travel (if living in a colder climate) to a warmer climate/the tropics. As someone else mentioned, I'm not sure if European Caribbean territories are part of the Schengen Zone In fact, even Aruba--as a duly full constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands--is not a part of the EU or Schengen Zone; it is not a mere territory, yet is treated somewhat as one.

[Chitowner86]

Schengen offers more diversity.

You can go to several very different countries with different cultures.

The USA offers you a single county. Yes, there is some diversity but it's all within the same country.

America's diversity is over represented in its largest cities, outside of iplaces like nyc, miami, sf, the US quickly turns into a pretty homogeneous plave with a dominant English language, and a pretty suburban and mundane experience.