Why some U.S. tourists are pretending not to be American when traveling abroad

Travelers fake their nationality overseas

A growing number of American travelers are hiding where they come from when they go overseas.

The tactic is called “flag jacking,” and it involves slapping Canadian flags on bags and clothing to avoid being identified as American.

Chelsea Metzger, a traveler from upstate New York, started posing as Canadian after a tense run-in with Canadian tourists at a bar in the Dominican Republic in early 2025.

She made up a whole backstory, claiming she lived in Janetville, Ontario. It worked, she said, unless a fellow American caught her accent.

Flag jacking goes back decades

This isn’t new. American travelers first started stitching Canadian flag patches onto their backpacks during the Vietnam War while hitchhiking across Europe.

The trick popped up again during the Gulf War in the 1990s and the Iraq War in the early 2000s.

A 2005 episode of “The Simpsons” even joked about it when Lisa Simpson explained the concept to her brother during a family trip to Italy.

The current wave ties back to strained relationships with allies, trade disputes, and foreign policy under the Trump administration.

Survey found most expected worse treatment

A Global Rescue survey of more than 1,400 experienced travelers, taken in March 2025 after President Trump’s address to Congress, found that about 72% expected Americans would face more negative treatment overseas.

Only about 3% thought things would get better. About 16% expected no change, and 9% weren’t sure.

Worth noting: Global Rescue is a travel risk management company, and its survey respondents are its own members, who tend to be more cautious than typical tourists. Still, major outlets picked up the findings.

European views of the U.S. fell fast

A YouGov EuroTrack survey from February 2025 showed that favorable views of the United States dropped sharply across seven Western European countries after Trump’s re-election.

Denmark saw the steepest slide, falling from 48% favorable to just 20%. Sweden and Germany each dropped about 20 points.

France fell 16 points, and the United Kingdom dropped 12. By the time of the survey, only about a third of people in Germany, France, and the U.K. still held a favorable view of the U.S.

Travel advisors heard growing client fears

The worry isn’t just showing up in polls. A survey of 305 U.S. travel advisors found that 73% had clients who voiced concerns about how they’d be treated as Americans abroad.

That number jumped from 60% just two months earlier.

About 39% of advisors said clients actually changed their travel plans because of it, and 59% said clients chose domestic trips instead.

Overall, 82% of advisors reported clients expressing some level of concern about traveling internationally.

Canadians called the practice disrespectful

Canadians aren’t flattered. A Yahoo News Canada poll found that about 84% of Canadian respondents called flag jacking disrespectful. Only about 6% saw it as harmless.

Some compared it to “stolen valor,” saying it cheapens Canadian identity.

Nearly 40% said they had grown more suspicious of people wearing Canadian flags abroad since the practice resurfaced.

The backlash heated up during a period of tension between the U.S. and Canada over tariffs and comments from the Trump administration about Canada.

A Canadian video went viral online

Canadian commentator Tod Maffin posted a video in mid-2025 calling out Americans who flag-jack, and it racked up more than 200,000 shares across social media.

He argued the Canadian flag isn’t some “invisibility cloak” for Americans to grab when things get uncomfortable.

Robert Schertzer, a professor at the University of Toronto, said Canadian identity partly defines itself in contrast to the United States.

Former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau reinforced that idea in early 2025, telling CNN that Canadians often define themselves by saying they are not American.

Tour guides say the disguise falls apart

European tour guides say Americans are easy to spot, no matter what flag they carry.

Denisa Podhrazska, who runs a London tour group, said Americans are typically recognizable because they’re loud, though she added they’re also very friendly.

London-based tour operator Charley Harrison said some Americans assume their culture is the default, like trying to pay in U.S. dollars abroad.

A Paris-based guide said real Canadians tend to identify themselves right away, making fakes easy to catch. Accent, vocabulary, and geography knowledge all give it away.

Concerns eased by later in 2025

The picture did improve as the year went on. A follow-up Global Rescue survey in summer 2025, with about 2,900 respondents, showed a 14% improvement in how travelers expected Americans to be treated abroad.

By fall, the share expecting negative treatment dropped from 72% to 61%. About a fifth of travelers said they expected things to stay the same or get better.

Most travelers, about 71%, reported no changes to their travel plans.

Dan Richards, CEO of Global Rescue, said the shift was meaningful and that most people were moving forward with confidence.

Most pushback stays mild, experts say

Barbara Bodine, a former U.S. ambassador and director of Georgetown University’s Institute for the Study of Diplomacy, said people abroad often criticize the American government but aren’t hostile toward individual travelers.

Violent demonstrations against Americans are rare, she said. Most travelers encounter nothing worse than body language or pointed questions about politics.

Travel veteran Tammy Levent said she visited Germany, Greece, Iceland, Thailand, and other countries since 2025 and never faced hostility.

A Paris-based relocation expert described the mood as more sympathetic than aggressive.

Experts say good manners beat any disguise

Etiquette specialists and former diplomats say cultural sensitivity matters far more than a flag patch.

Experts suggest learning basic polite phrases in the local language, dressing low-key, and keeping voices down in public.

Daniel Post Senning of the Emily Post Institute told The Washington Post that it’s hard to hide being American, and travelers should focus on being a good guest instead.

Some travelers found that simply being honest about their nationality and expressing disagreement with U.S. policies quickly eased any tension.

Flag jacking reflects a recurring pattern

About 60% of Americans say they never travel abroad for fun, according to a YouGov report heading into 2026, so the anxiety affects a fairly small slice of the population.

Among those who do go overseas, more than two in five said they traveled less in the past year, with Gen Xers and Baby Boomers pulling back the most.

Flag jacking has happened under multiple administrations over six decades, suggesting it follows cycles of foreign policy tension rather than any single president.

Travel experts say the best move is to engage honestly, not hide behind borrowed symbols.

This article was created with AI assistance and human editing.

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