ACTION ALERT: Oppose IML revisions
UPDATE: This bill has passed out of the House Foreign Affairs Committee and will be heard by the full House for a possible vote. Use this link to find out your representatives and call them to register your opposition to the bill.
Florida Action Committee has done a good job of putting together information about this issue that affects many registrants. The full piece is here.
The bill adding to the current IML requirements will do these things:
- It will amend the IML to go beyond warning of anticipated foreign travel by sending notifications and adding ‘unique identifiers’ on the passports of US citizens already present overseas, no matter what the effects of doing so may be to them and their families there or back in the USA.
- It will establish a list of both Americans and non-Americans with convictions that will be circulated to many countries around the world. The bill does not specify what will be done with that list.
- It will enhance the attempt by the new SORNA regulations to create a de facto federal registry inasmuch as the IML will be enforced against individuals no matter where they are simply because they might one day return to a state where they would need to register.
A markup of the bill will take place this coming Tuesday, the 15th. The FAC article stresses the importance of advocates telephoning the offices of the House Foreign Affairs Committee members. A list of all of the committee members with contact information, including telephone numbers, is given in the article.
NARSOL agrees that telephoning the offices of representatives is the most effective way of making our opinions known. Anyone can find his or her House representatives by going here and putting in the zip code. Clicking on the representative’s picture will go to the web page where contact information, including office telephone numbers, can be found.
I am a man in my mid seventies who pled to a sexual charge well over seventeen years ago. I completed my probation all sentence, have maintained my registry obligations, and have remained totally crime free since that plea agreement. Yet, under I.M.L. I would be forced to have a marked passport that indicates to any foreign country that I might wish to visit, that I am “coming to their country to commit additional sexual crimes. Even though I am a decorated Vietnam veteran this law makes me feel like a man without a country. I certainly am treated that way by my government.
Unfortunately, Alan, for all practical purposes you are a man without a country. Anyone on a sex offender registry is considered unworthy of even basic human rights, and after many years of legal battles there seems no end in sight for the hardships imposed upon registered citizens. There is not a state or federal congress that has the integrity to fully stand for constitutional justice. We are dwellers in the false and unfavorable court of public opinion, and no one is willing to stand in opposition to that. Every legal victory always leaves room for states to amend their wrongs, which usually means the addition of more wrongs. So, we live with what we have and make the best of it. Thank you for your military service, but don’t live your life waiting for the dismissing of sex offender registries any time soon. The current political conditions in America make this even more unlikely. Maintain your personal integrity, undeterred by the laws designed to shame, dishearten, and destroy you.
IML is a diplomatic nightmare! And which ever group thought it up has something other than traditional diplomacy in mind. Diplomacy as a science and as a strategy has basic tenants and canon. IML violates the 1st, by definition. Some few are interested in something other than the full faith and credit of the United States of America.
Calling in opposition to people who aren’t listening anyway…
This will always be the case, they don’t care that you oppose since it’s not YOU that they seek to please. They already know what every word of every sentence they put into “law” will lead to. “Unintended consequences” are actually the desired ones and “legislative intent” is just the cover.
Face those facts. They built a one way system where everyone gets a triple win win win…everyone but you. So if that’s their game then it’s time to revolt. They should be afraid because their problem is they feel untouchable until someone gets their game. So if you want to get even then best you get real real smart. And stop voting for the wrong right guy.
Actually there is nothing new here. This is a method of controlling the populace. It’s just another incremental step for the socialist regime that is in power in this country to do what both Hitler and the Nazi Party and Stalin and The Union of Soviet Socialist Repoblics did right out in the open.
Hitler started by registering the guns and then the Gypsies, and then the Jews. Then he started rounding them up and taking the guns and placing them in concentration camps and then experimenting with them and killing them as enemies of the state.
This soon sloshed over into the German population and effected any one who would voice any opposition to the government’s activities.
Stalin and the socialist party took over every aspect of the people’s lives. The people were told where the would live. Where they would work, what they would study and had papers that allowed them to only travel to certain places and if they wanted to go anywhere else permission had to be obtained along with permits and an itinerary of where they were to be and when.
I could go on but, to say the least, this is exactly what our Socialist Congress and Courts want and are doing to us. We’re just one step on the way to open blatant slavery.
I know that many of the younger folks that may read this may not have heard of these occurrences or if they have, they have been written off as exaggerated or in some cases stories that didn’t actually happen. Well I am here to tell you that they did and were very real and tragic. I lived through much of it and have pictures that were taken by my father when he was at Dachau when it was liberated.
I lived though the Cold War. I knew actual Soviet defectors. I new people who had somehow managed to survive getting past the Berlin Wall. I was stationed at Ramstein Airforce Base.
Yes I am an old guy.
Yes I have seen many of these things with my own eyes and history is repeating itself once more and what we’re seeing now is just a glimmer of what’s to come.
This proves my point from my other post. Until there are no politicians this bull…. will never end. It has nothing to do with safety it’s a seek and destroy mission
Could someone at NARSOL provide some talking points or suggestions
as to what to say to your representative’s staff when making these calls.
Most sex offenders have no experience with what is almost public speaking and
most people have no experience when talking about sex offenders.
I’ve been told by some expats that the state department is already notifying people over seas that their passport has been invalidated and then directs them to the nearest consulate for a new passport, picture and the IML designation. At the individuals cost of course. State sends that letter to your last known address here in the US.