FlyerTalk Forums - View Single Post - State Department's "Think of the Children!!" Denies US Citizens Passports
Old Aug 15, 2007, 12:55 pm
  #28  
jedison
 
Join Date: Jun 2004
Location: SF Bay Area
Programs: UA 1K, Starwood/Marriott Plat, Others of little note
Posts: 1,148
Boy, the black helicopter crowd is fully deploying their straw men on this one.

There is no "due process" issue here. These are legally binding judgments that are not being paid. If somebody wants to appeal the judgment, that is their right. But nobody's appealing the judgment, they just don't want to be held to their obligations. Poor babies. Anybody who has a problem with paying them immediately can enter into a repayment agreement in installments, which when approved by the court that issued the original judgment will release any restrictions.

You may not like it, but drivers licenses and passports are not fundamental rights. They are privileges. And they are being restricted in particularly pernicious cases, like these judgments in which some deadbeat flees the country and now starts whining when he can't travel as he chooses. Meanwhile the other parent has to care for the child. The child is the victim here, passports are not denied for unpaid alimony, only child support. If he wants to be outside U.S. jurisdiction, all he needs to do is give up his U.S. citizenship and get a passport from another country. If you choose one of the sleazier ones it's not that hard. If you don't like it, man up and pay your obligations. Or demonstrate to a judge's satisfaction that you cannot.

Don't like judges making decisions? Go become a citizen of some other country.

As for teenagers not getting to drive when they drop out of school, too bad. It's a privilege. If they don't like it, they know exactly what they have to do.
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