Passport Applicants May Have To Affirm That They Are ‘Not Required To Register’ As Sex Offenders
Under a proposed State Department policy, U.S. passport applicants would have to affirm that they are “not required to register” as sex offenders. If they are “required to register,” they would have to submit a “supplementary explanatory statement under oath.”
The State Department says that change, which it announced in a Federal Register notice seeking public comment last month, is “in accordance with” the International Megan’s Law (IML), which requires “unique passport identifiers” for “covered sex offenders.” Although that 2016 law is ostensibly aimed at preventing “child sex tourism,” it applies to many people who have never engaged in such conduct or shown any propensity to do so. The proposed passport affirmation sweeps even more broadly, and it is apt to have a chilling effect on international travel by Americans who are required to register as sex offenders—a category that includes nearly 800,000 people, many of whom have never committed crimes anything like those targeted by the IML.
The State Department notice, which also describes revisions to comply with President Donald Trump’s executive order regarding “sex” vs. “gender identity,” says the registration query would be included in the “Acts or Conditions” section of the passport application. The current version of that affirmation says: “I have not been convicted of a federal or state drug offense or convicted of a ‘sex tourism’ crimes statute, and I am not the subject of an outstanding federal, state, or local warrant of arrest for a felony; a criminal court order forbidding my departure from the United States; or a subpoena received from the United States in a matter involving federal prosecution for, or grand jury investigation of, a felony.”
The revision would add a clause saying the applicant “is not required to register as a sex offender.” That presents a couple of puzzles.
Judging from the State Department’s invocation of the IML, this change is meant to facilitate “unique passport identifiers” for sex offenders covered by that law. The unique identifier, which the State Department began requiring in 2017, consists of a passport notation that says, “The bearer was convicted of a sex offense against a minor, and is a covered sex offender
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