Disneyland Paris; July 7, 1994
Sébastien Durand: This is the first time that you have traveled outside the United States. You have seen many countries. How many countries have you visited to date ?
Carl Barks: This is our number nine.
SD: And you still have many left ?
CB: Yes, I have more to visit: Holland and England.
SD: I understand that you had no passport to leave the United States.
CB: Well, I had never had any use for a passport before and at the time I was born, the records were kept in that western homestead country. People lived many miles apart and I guess that when I was born, there was word gotten to a doctor about five miles away to come out and deliver a baby at this homestead. Whether he recorded it or not… There was no place to record it because the county governments were pretty flimsy in those days. So at the time I got my social security at 65, I had to establish that I was born in the United States. My brother who had had a mandatory record, being older than I, was able to prove it, because he had been accepted as an American citizen back in 1918.
When it came to passport, they did not accept that. That was not enough proof. And I can't remember how many things we had to do to finally convince them. They sent me a bunch of questions and I answered them. But anyway, they finally realized that I must have been born as an American citizen. They could not prove I wasn't, so they gave me a passport. […]
