In the middle of a pandemic, similar restrictions apply to everyone. These restrictions are generally not based on citizenship but residency. Everybody is encou

In the middle of a pandemic, similar restrictions apply to everyone. These restrictions are generally not based on citizenship but residency. Everybody is encouraged to stay where they are (or were, when it broke out). US citizens residing abroad are not being treated any worse than they were: it's just more difficult to move from country A to country B anywhere in the world for anybody right now (except within the EU/EEA, which largely reopened). US citizens are not being singled out, and while they're also not being given preferential treatment, it is hard to imagine they would have been had this happened anytime in the past, say 50 years ago. The situation is just largely unprecedented. It is inaccurate to compare the situation of travellers now and in the past, when travel was much less common and less affordable, and thus the population flows were much smaller: this is the first pandemic of the global era, so of course the restrictions are going to impact more people and be more noticeable than any similar measures implemented in the past. Arguably it has to be so to control the spread of the virus. On a general note, the US passport was never a great choice for people who mostly live outside the US due to the cumbersome tax regulations one has to endure as part of being a US citizen but, it can be argued, it could remain so precisely due to the power the US enjoys to compel other countries to enforce its laws, as demonstrated with e.g. FATCA [1]. Thus there has always been a steady outflow of millionaires looking for greener pastures. [2] Separately, the US passport was also never highly-ranked for people who just wanted to travel around as visitors: in that category it is easily outclassed by e.g. Singapore or Japan, which let you visit China or (in the latter case) India visa-free. [3] Still, that was never the reason for it being so prized: the US has likely the best career opportunities in the world, so people want the citizenship and the passport that comes with it to get inside the country, not to stay away from it and go elsewhere. If they do travel abroad however, the US passport still generally affords unrivalled consular protection in most of the world. And nothing really changes in this department just because of the pandemic. I'm really surprised to see an article like this from what purportedly aspires to be the Canadian BBC. It's really quite poorly-researched for such an alarmist tone. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Account_Tax_Compliance_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Account_Tax_Compliance... 2. https://www.cbsnews.com/media/5-citizens-who-left-the-us-to-avoid-paying-tax/ https://www.cbsnews.com/media/5-citizens-who-left-the-us-to-... 3. https://www.henleypassportindex.com/ https://www.henleypassportindex.com/