US State Department to revoke passports of 2,700 parents — Bbcnews
The US State Department will begin revoking passports on Friday from parents who owe $100,000 or more in unpaid child support, bbcnews. The first round covers about 2,700 American passport holders, according to figures the Department of Health and Human Services supplied to the State Department.
Mora Namdar, the assistant secretary of state for consular affairs, said the department was broadening a practice it says has already helped force payment. “We are expanding a commonsense practice that has been proven effective at getting those who owe child support to pay their debt,” Namdar said. “Once these parents resolve their debts, they can once again enjoy the privilege of a US passport.”
Friday’s first revocations
The policy starts with the highest-balance cases. Parents in the $100,000-or-more group will be the first to receive passport revocations, and people whose passports are revoked will be told they cannot use those documents for travel. Those who clear the debt will have to apply for a new passport once their child support arrears are confirmed as paid.
The change goes beyond the older practice, which until this week applied only to people renewing passports. Under the new policy, HHS will inform the State Department of all past-due payments of more than $2,500, and parents in that group who have passports will have them revoked.
1996 law, 1998 program
The lower threshold comes from a little-enforced 1996 law. The passport revocation program began in earnest in 1998, and since then states have collected some $657m in arrears through it. Over the past five years, the program has brought in more than $156m in more than 24,000 individual lump-sum payments.
The State Department has described the program as a “powerful tool.” A statement reported by the said officials have “seen data that hundreds of parents took action and resolved their arrears with state authorities since news broke that the state department would start proactively revoking passports.” The same statement said, “While we can’t confirm the causation in all of those cases, we are taking this action precisely to impel these parents to do the right thing by their children and by US law.”
What changes after Friday
For parents in the first group, Friday is the point at which travel access starts to narrow. For parents who owe more than $2,500, the policy is set to widen soon after that, once the State Department begins receiving more data from HHS on past-due accounts. A passport holder abroad at the time of revocation will need to visit a US embassy or consulate to obtain an emergency travel document to return to the United States.
That leaves a simple deadline for anyone already inside the system: pay down the debt, or lose the passport until the arrears are settled. The State Department says the program has already pushed hundreds of parents to resolve their cases since the expansion was disclosed on 10 February, and the first revocations are scheduled to begin on Friday.
