Posted by OutOfHere 1 day ago
The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 (PRWORA)[0]
SEC. 370. DENIAL OF PASSPORTS FOR NONPAYMENT OF CHILD SUPPORT. (a) HHS Certification Procedure.— (1) Secretarial responsibility.—Section 452 (42 U.S.C. 652), as amended by section 345 of this Act, is amended by adding at the end the following new subsection: “(k)(1) If the Secretary receives a certification by a State agency in accordance with the requirements of section 454(31) that an individual owes arrearages of child support in an amount exceeding $5,000, the Secretary shall transmit such certification to the Secretary of State for action (with respect to denial, revocation, or limitation of passports) pursuant to paragraph (2). “(2) The Secretary of State shall, upon certification by the Secretary transmitted under paragraph (1), refuse to issue a passport to such individual, and may revoke, restrict, or limit a passport issued previously to such individual.[1]
The above may have predated the amended copy, as a threshold of $2,500 seemed to be the case at least 3 years ago, for whatever that is worth.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_Responsibility_and_Wo...
[1] https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/COMPS-1793/uslm/COMPS-17...
If I lived in France I doubt I would travel outside of the Schengen Area.
And people wonder why no one is having kids. It is punishment after punishment by a society who pretends to care about kids but does fuck all to help, only to rub it in your face and punish you when you are down.
This isn't true. See e.g. https://consulmex.sre.gob.mx/washington/index.php/ligavisos/... :
> "All foreigners, regardless of their nationality, are required to present a valid and not expired passport or travel document when entering Mexico (traveling by air, land or sea)."
What you may have observed is Mexican border control at a small crossing may not enforce that requirement.
Article 11 [Mexican Constitution]
Every person has the right to enter and leave the country, to travel through its territory and to move house without the necessity of a letter of safe passage, passport, safe-conduct or any other similar requirement. In the event of criminal or civil liability, the exercise of this right shall be subject to the judicial authority. Relating to limitations imposed by the laws on immigration and public health, or in respect to undesirable aliens residing in the country, the exercise of this right shall be subject to the administrative authority.
https://www.constituteproject.org/constitution/Mexico_2015#s...
Or not.
The main point here is that it's not the entire population of regular US citizens that should be looked at here, more the specific behaviour of the subset in question.
As an aside I've been in and out of Mexico a bunch of times (formerly entered, 5 or 6 times; crossed the border, literally a hundred+ times) - but as an Australian geophysical exploration surveyor on the job it's always been via other people dealing with all the paperwork.
Also, EU citizens do not require a passport to travel within the EU; by law, their national ID card suffices, thus making passports unnecessary for much of their travel.
It’s generally very difficult to get a second passport.
Very few people have two passports nowadays.
There are currently 180 million and change active issued passport to US citizens.
I am assuming that's what they meant.
It's to punish poor, especially nonwhite, people and make it hard for them to escape the oppression of the Trump regime.
I'm also curious why you think it is only targeting people of color and not people of white
And it's targeting poor people, who are disproportionately nonwhite.
- X doesn't pay child support because X lost their job.
- X gets their driver's license revoked because they missed child support payments.
So ... how are you supposed to find a new job with out a car in most U.S. communities? This doesn't improve the situation for anyone involved, but allows the state to make it much, much worse.
I found this link informative.
https://www.ncsl.org/human-services/license-restrictions-for...
It's crazy how obsessed America is with kicking people in the teeth when they are down. Your kids are broke? Sorry, we won't help you, but how about we take away your ability to work domestically or abroad.
I have a lot more issue with a $2.5K limit--that could be just one or two (intentionally or unintentionally) misreported payments. Or a paycheck hiccup. Or a layoff. Or a government error (because we all know how infallible DOGE was). Or a government shutdown. Or ...
We specifically decry the concepts of debtor's prisons and social credit in the US. For good reasons.
This is leaving aside the whole discussion about your passport being an identity document that isn't subject to control of a single US state government like your driver's license.
In all of those situations, the child still has needs that need to be paid for.
“Honestly, since we're going towards socialism, we need to abolish child support. Women have the right to get an abortion because it is their body their choice. A man has to use his body …”
That was enough for me.
Social programs =/= socialism. There are plenty of capitalist economies with robust social safety nets - most EU countries provide free healthcare, education, and forms of UBI in the forms of grants for artists and social welfare for those incapable of working.
While it makes perfect sense to me that a pregnant woman should have final (only?) say in whether or not she carries a child to term, it strikes me as rather off that:
* Outside of marriage, the biological father has no rights when it comes to participating in their child's life, whether we're talking custody or mere visitation.
* The father has no right to avoid child support despite having no say in either its birth or participation in their lives.
* Upon being targeted by the state for child support responsibilities, the court system virtually never allows cessation of payments upon a failed paternity test (i.e., paternity fraud). Note: roughly 30% of paternity tests that are performed reveal children are not biologically related to their presumed fathers.
* In about half the states, it's illegal to even perform a paternity test without consent of the mother.
I do find it fascinating that many people will use the very same blase "you should have thought of that before having sex" dismissals when bringing up any of the above issues as are used so often against women fighting for their right to abortion.
tl;dr: child support should be linked with visitation/custody rights. If a father abandons or is denied those rights, they should be absolved of child support, especially if it's proven they aren't actually the biological father.