The American passport is one of the most recognizable, at least to its citizens and if you’re traveling abroad an American passport one of the best to have. There are a lot of stereotypes about Americans abroad, but even for all the negative ones, flashing that dark blue book will generally make you have an easier time of things in the airport.

When I was abroad Spring of 2014, I did a lot of traveling, and whenever I passed through an airport and showed my passport to the inspecting officer, a smile would always cross my face when I saw others waiting in line with the same blue book. My brethren, an instant friendship.

For as much as Americans might be talked about in other countries, we tend not to talk about our own tourism, within our own states. When a family from Illinois decides they want to visit the Grand Canyon for vacation, no one worries about making sure everyone packs their passport.

However, for a few states this could shortly change. In 2005 an act called “REAL ID” was passed, which will mean that the identification you flash in order to, for example, get on a plane, needs to have a “machine-readable technology” in the form of a chip. Most states have complied with the law, and have updated licenses to reflect the new law. Other states have been a little slower. If you’re a resident of Louisiana, Minnesota, American Samoa, New Hampshire, or New York, you might very well need to bring a passport along if your planning on flying domestically in 2016.

An astonishingly 64% of Americans do not have a valid passport. It’s easy to travel from the ocean to the desert to the forest and never leave the country, you don’t even need to leave the comfort of your car.

For many, the cost and time associated with travel outside of The United States is unfeasible, and so the fees and forms for getting a passport seem like not something they should even bother with. But a passport gives the owner a sense of freedom, in a day they could cross borders, and assuming they don’t mess up those visa’s or stay in one place too long, they can continue traveling forever.

If passports become necessary for domestic flights, there’s no doubt that we’ll see that number of people with a valid passport rise, but the U.S. is not like others countries, we have companies that fly people state to state every other day for work. And adding another layer to get through at the airport would only add more confusion and hatred for our flight system.

Requiring a passport for a domestic flight seems like a bad idea overall. It might boost the number of Americans traveling outside of the United States, but it will also add costs and make it more difficult for those who are the least fortunate to be able to find new places to live, and to be able to visit new places. Although passports might soon be required for some American citizens wishing to travel from state to state, depending on how the REAL ID act works out, making passports a requirement would only make traveling more complicated, and less feasible for many- and that’s not the point of a passport at all.