I was afraid of this, when I bought my 15PM. Traveled to Chile, and what would have been a quick transaction at the Entel store ended in disappointment. Apparently you need a Chilean ID to purchase an eSIM. Fortunately, I brought a pixel 3 I can hotspot, and takes a nano sim, but it’s something of a hassle. My only regret so far.
Many people are mentioning buying the non-US model. Unfortunately this comes with some trade-offs, the biggest is the lack of UWB. The non-north American model lacks some additional bands. In addition to that, there is the issue of warranty support and AppleCare.
I really dislike the face that Apple removed the sim tray for US models specifically because of issues getting service on travel. The concept of eSIM is great but the implementation so far here in the US has been generally poor.
At this point, my plan is to just take an iPhone SE with me when I travel and not even bother with trying to do an eSIM outside of the US.