I also have a stateside AMEX, and like davistev, am not a US resident. I got my US Amex by first opening a US-dollar card out of Hong Kong (at that time US-dollar cards for the Asian region were handled out of HK), followed by one call to AMEX Customer Service in the US to have the account transferred to the US.

I should point out that my AMEX is not SPG, but the standard charge card.

[This message has been edited by DoubleJ (edited Jan 02, 2004).]