The US State Department will begin revoking the passports of thousands of parents who have significant unpaid child support arrears. The department told The Associated Press on Thursday that the passport cancellations will begin Friday and will target individuals who owe $100,000 or more in unpaid child support. About 2,700 U.S. passport holders are expected to be affected by the move, according to data provided by the Department of Health and Human Services.
Here’s what the US State Department said
The rescission program, plans for which were first reported by the AP in February, will soon be greatly expanded to include parents who owe more than $2,500 in unpaid child support — a threshold set by a little-enforced 1996 law, the State Department said.
It was unclear Thursday how many passport holders owe more than $2,500 because HHS is still collecting data from state agencies that track the numbers, but it could include many thousands more, officials said, as reported by the AP.
Until this week, only those who applied for a passport extension were subject to the penalty. Under the new policy, HHS will notify the State Department of all overdue payments of more than $2,500, and parents in that passport group will have their documents revoked, the department said.
“We are expanding a common-sense practice that has proven effective in getting those who owe child support to pay their debt,” said Under Secretary of State for Consular Affairs Mora Namdar. “Once these parents resolve their debts, they can once again enjoy the privilege of a US passport.”
Since the AP reported on the expansion of the program on February 10, the department said it had “reported that hundreds of parents have taken action to resolve their arrears with state authorities as reports surfaced that the State Department would begin proactively canceling passports.”
“While we cannot confirm causation in all of these cases, we are taking these steps precisely to get these parents to do the right thing by their children and by US law,” the department said.
Even before the policy was expanded, the department said the program was a “powerful tool” to get parents to pay what they owed. It said states have collected about $657 million in arrears since it began in earnest in 1998, including more than $156 million in more than 24,000 individual one-time payments over the past five years.
Those whose passports have been revoked under the scheme will be informed that they will not be able to use their documents to travel and will need to apply for a new passport once their arrears have been confirmed as paid.
A passport holder who is abroad at the time of the recall will need to visit a US embassy or consulate to obtain an emergency travel document that will allow them to return to the United States.
