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[In an attempt to disenfranchise voters] US will start revoking passports for thousands of parents who owe child support, AP learns (apnews.com)
submitted 6 months ago by to c/progressivepolitics@lemmy.world
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The revocation program, plans for which were first reported by the AP in February, soon will be greatly expanded to cover parents who owe more than $2,500 in unpaid child support — the threshold set by a little-enforced 1996 law, the State Department said.

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[+] 78 points 6 months ago (11 children)
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  • [–] 18 points 6 months ago (3 children)

    My question is, how does this get child support to the kid? I guess the parent can’t flee abroad but is that an inherent risk of parents owning 2500 bucks? This isn’t a solution to the problem at hand

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  • [–] 15 points 6 months ago (2 children)

    It doesn't. This does nothing to get people to pay their child support, and the people who can't afford to pay it aren't in any position to flee the country. This law isn't about getting them to pay child support, it's about stripping rights from the kind of people who can't or don't.

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  • [–] 11 points 6 months ago (5 children)

    The majority of Americans don't have passports, what has a passport got to do with it?

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  • [–] 12 points 6 months ago (4 children)

    They're trying to require people to prove citizenship in order to vote. If this policy happens and that requirement becomes the law of the land, Boom, poor people poll tax. If you only think of each thing that's happening as an island that can't change anything else, you're going to miss the forest for the trees.

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  • [–] 2 points 6 months ago (1 child)

    As a European this sounds weird.
    Everyone needs to take their ID when we vote.
    We have to take the letter they send to you personally too.

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  • [–] 4 points 6 months ago

    Yeah, and here in the US we don't have a national ID (cause "muh freedum"), so it's the government's job to prove you don't have the right to vote. You show up at your polling place, you either are already registered and just need to give your name and they confirm some stuff and then you go vote. Some states (like mine) have same day registration, so you bring some verifiable mail (like a bill) that proves where you live and then you can vote with a provisional ballet (which will get tossed if you attempted to vote illegally) and that's it. Don't need an ID for any of that. The punishments for voter fraud are very high, so the risk-reward for falsely presenting yourself as someone else to vote basically doesn't happen, and when it does the person is usually caught.

    US politicians act like voter ID is just common sense, but it is effectively an unnecessary barrier to voting since all of the info the ID would give, the government already has and uses to verify who you are.

    If we had a national ID that was freely available to all, absolutely agreed that it would make sense, but we don't got that. We couldn't even get that in response to 9/11, so it'll never happen.

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  • [–] 5 points 6 months ago

    They only care when they can use it as a bludgeon against the general public. See also: the push for "age checks" on the internet. In this case, they are criminalizing poverty.

    The bullshit becomes obvious when we start talking about things like "school lunch debt."

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