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US Passport Changes Likely to Restrict Travel for Sex Offenders

Transcript of the above video:

In this video today we are gong to be specifically discussing one particular topic with respect to US Passports.

To quote directly from an article from the Associated Press, this came out in the Chicago Tribune, November 23, 2017 headlined: “US Passports to Identify Child Sex Offenders”. Quoting directly, “the State Department said Wednesday, it would begin revoking passports of registered child sex offenders and will require them to apply for a new one that carries a “unique identifier of their status”. Those applying for a passport for the first time will not be issued one without the identifier which will be a notice printed inside the back cover of the passport book that reads , and I quote, “the bearer was convicted of a sex offence against a minor and is a covered sex offender pursuant to US Law”. Basically, and we go into some detail on this in another video on this channel. This is essentially a further step in the direction that has basically been undertaken the past roughly 5 to 7 years. Under Department of Homeland Security’s guidelines, the Homeland Security Investigation Service will rather often in matters pertaining to registered sex offenders or those with a sex offence conviction on their record, they will go ahead, at least with respect to the Thai officials, send ahead a notice to Thai Immigration before the individual in question even arrives in Thailand, stating that in fact someone on an inbound flight with a passport designation of you know, whatever the passport number is etc. they will basically give all the relevant information regarding that individual and they will go ahead and just inform Thai immigration that “Hey, this person is a registered sex offender, has a sex offence on their record from a prior occasion”. As a result of this, Thai immigration at least in most of the situations I have ever seen this occurring, Thai immigration goes ahead and just denies that individual entry into the Kingdom and basically it’s been my experience that those who are trying to enter the Kingdom that way with such an offence on their record are basically barred from getting in. I am not getting into the details of whether this policy is a good idea or not, this is just simply an informative video but it should be noted that clearly, officials in the United States are taking these matters more seriously, and I have to imagine that, it looks to me like this passport program of having this unique identifier is basically going to be doing as a practical matter what has been done in the past where Homeland Security Investigation was sending out these notices; now that individual will just carry that notice with them in their passport. This would seem to be the result of legislation such as International Megan’s Law and some other legislation similar to that but the net upshot with respect to how this is going to play out in the future is, I think fairly soon, I think it’s going to be rather, quite frankly as a practical matter, rather more difficult for people with such convictions on their record and those who are actually on the sex offender data base, to effect, I think it’s going to be rather difficult to travel abroad outside the United States because this designation is very likely, for example in the case of Thailand, it is virtually certain to result in a bar of entry into the Kingdom. Moreover, I think it’s going to be the case in other countries around the world too. It remains to be seen but I don’t think it is illogical to infer that.