call to action: fight back against IML amendment

In November, I wrote about a dangerous amendment to International Megan's Law (IML) currently under consideration in Washington DC. A friend who is following the bill closely wrote me with his observations and a warning that this bill is likely to pass:

Last week, the House Committee on Foreign Affairs voted to approve the Frederick Douglass Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2022. The vote was unanimous and no amendments were passed. There was no debate about the bill, apart from a brief discussion of its cost and a couple of unrelated matters.

It was the second version of the bill from this Congressional session. The first bill, H.R. 5150, was much longer and contained some good provisions. Several of them were removed from the second bill, H.R. 6552 -- notably one that made important allowances for juvenile victims of human trafficking who are convicted of crimes against their traffickers. 

One other, not so good, section remained. It is section 201, which amends and redefines aspects of the International Megan's Law, and reauthorizes it for another five years. It applies the IML not only to people who anticipate foreign travel but also to people who already live in other countries. The US government will now notify other governments of the criminal records of these people, and it may revoke their passports because those passports do not have the special mark required by the IML. Previously, passports were revoked and marked domestically.

The amended IML also requires the US government to compile a list of all people with sex convictions from every country that is part of the US visa-waiver program. The bill does not specify what is to be done with this list, but it does authorize the US government to share the list of 'covered' US citizens with authorities in these countries.

The definitions of 'covered' in this bill are rather vague given the different legal systems in so many countries. There are several definitions of 'covered' in the IML itself. Such vagueness almost certainly will lead to mistakes which could be irreversible given the worldwide distribution of the new IML list. More than six dozen countries, for example, still outlaw same-sex activity. Many more have done in the past. Which means people around the world with such convictions may well be added to the list that the US government will probably use to deny entry and share with other countries for the same purpose.

That likelihood is worrisome for the victims of human trafficking this bill is meant to help. Some of them also probably have criminal convictions. Section 201 treats them no differently from the human traffickers who have exploited them.

There are multiple ironies worth noting. Perhaps the largest group of people with convictions for historic crimes that are no longer crimes in many US states and in many visa-free travel countries are members of the LGBTQ+ community. But at nearly the exact moment this bill was passed in committee, the US House of Representatives passed the Global RESPECT Act, which imposes sanctions on countries that do not respect LGBTQ+ rights. The floor manager of that Act was Congressman Gregory Meeks, the same person who chairs the Committee on Foreign Affairs which approved the Douglass bill. The RESPECT Act was sponsored by David Cicilline, also a member of the same committee.

Another irony has to do with the bill's being named for Frederick Douglass. If the IML had been in force during his lifetime, it most likely would have been applied to him. That is because he married a white woman who [at 45, was 21 years younger than he was]. This was a 'crime against nature' in many states, in other words, a sex offense. He was in any event still denied the use of a passport because the US government did not consider him to possess the full rights of a citizen.

Yet another irony is that this bill was passed by a Democratic-led committee. It will probably go on to be passed by a Democratic congress, and signed by a Democratic president. Yet the bill's lead sponsor was Republican Congressman Chris Smith, who has led a 40-year-long inquisition against various groups, including LGBTQ+ persons and the pro-choice movement. He has not always succeeded. He has succeeded in this instance because his bill does not directly name any of his usual targets (apart from people convicted of sex offenses), but there can be little doubt that many of them and their families will be entrapped by its vague provisions. 

Finally, it is less ironic than perverse that Congressman Smith was just given an award by a group of Orthodox Jews for his service as co-chair of the US Congress's task force for combating anti-semitism; chaired for many years its Helsinki Commission for human rights; and today co-chairs the Tom Lantos human rights commission, named for a Holocaust survivor and famous champion of human rights around the world. Smith more than most people should be aware that the IML and registries in general bear a strong resemblance to historic campaigns of collective punishment, shaming, and dehumanization. Alas, because of the IML, the United States has joined Nazi Germany in making it official policy to single out a whole subset of its population for special marks on their passports. 

No major US or international human rights organization, apart from the small handful working for registrants, spoke out publicly against this section of the bill. No major religious figure or group questioned its ethics. No politician condemned the obvious overreach, the vagueness, or the many likely unintended consequences of Section 201. So far as most people can tell, the US State Department and other parts of the US Government that will now be tasked with targeting US citizens and their families overseas, and with composing a list of foreigners to be updated twice per year, have not expressed any serious reservations about the legality or the rationale for these provisions. 

The bill will probably now head to a vote in the full House and then in the Senate. As with the IML, that is likely to happen first by suspension of the rules and then by unanimous consent. The only difference this time may be with the president, who will probably celebrate the legislation visibly, unlike Barack Obama, who signed the IML quietly during a Congressional recess when he could have used his pocket veto to stop what will probably continue to be a long-term process of expanding the law's provisions and the minority groups it targets.

It may be tempting to set this aside if you think it will not directly affect you. Without loud opposition, though, Congressmen like Chris Smith will be emboldened to continue trampling human rights. We must push back every time laws are proposed that will increase the reach of the registry.

How to do that?

Call, email, or send letters to your Senators and Representatives and ask them to vote against this bill. Identify your Congressional members and find their contact information by entering your address here. Ask your family and friends to do the same. 

Spread the word. Contact local, national, and international organizations that have a stake in this--registry reform, LGBTQ+ rights, criminal justice reform, racial and ethnic justice, human rights--and ask them to oppose the bill. Give them a link to this blog post so they can read about the bill. 

Read my friend's letter again to see if you can identify an organization that ought to be aware. If you do not draw their attention to this bill, they may not have the opportunity to oppose it.

If this bill is passed, the United States government will put U.S. citizens and U.S. nationals at risk in foreign countries. Don't be fooled by the noble-sounding language about stopping human trafficking. People who were at one time convicted of sex offenses are not trafficking humans for sex or for labor. 

A Venn diagram of human traffickers and people convicted of sex offenses would look about the same as a Venn diagram of human traffickers and people employed by Congress.