International Megan’s Law, a bill cobbled together by House Rep. Chris Smith of New Jersey and his counterpart in the Senate, Ed Royce, has now passed both Houses of Congress and is on its way to President Obama for his signature.

The notification of foreign governments element of IML simply codifies and expands practices already in place and exercised by the U.S. Government. The U.S. has been providing notification of U.S. sex offender criminal histories to foreign countries for several years, a practice which has already resulted in many RSOs being refused entry into foreign countries. These notices explicitly request that the recipient foreign country refuse that American citizen entry into their country.

The following is what IML will do:

– Burdens the Registered Sex Offender (including those convicted of possessing or viewing child pornography and other non-contact offenses), with the legal obligation to notify authorities, twenty-one days in advance, of their intention to travel internationally along with all travel plans and destinations. Failure to provide such information will result in felony criminal prosecution and imprisonment.

-Limits the terms of validity of a passport held by a Registered Sex Offender (RSO) to one year and provides the State Department with the prerogative to deny issuance of a passport to an RSO, altogether.

– Establishes a new office, The “Angel Watch Center” within ICE (Immigration & Customs Enforcement, Department of Homeland Security) which acts as an intermediary between the U.S., foreign governments and INTERPOL as part of its own program to identify sex offenders in international travel.

– The “Angel Watch Center” will act with final authority in issuing notifications to foreign governments alerting them to the intended travel of American RSOs allowing that country to forbid entry to that traveler.

– The “Angel Watch Center” will consult with non-governmental organizations, including those which are “faith-based”, who are said to have “expertise” in matters of “child sex trafficking” and will also liaise with those organizations in conducting criminal investigations, such as covertly surveilling identified American sex offenders in “hot spots” said to be rife with “sex trafficking” (in one scenario enthusiastically envisioned by Rep. Smith).

– Purports to simply transmit criminal conviction data to foreign governments without the expectation that it will necessarily result in the sex offender having his (or her, increasingly) travel rights restricted. But the speeches on the floor of the House tell a different story with Rep. Smith explicitly identifying refusal of entry, and keeping sex offenders confined within the U.S., as a clearly desirable goal and outcome.

– Purports to provide “constructive notice” to sex offenders which will include a good-faith attempt to advise them prior to their departure if the Office believes they are likely to be refused entry (as a result of foreign government notification). However, IML makes no assurances that it will do so and exempts itself from any liability when it does fail to do so.

– Provides “technical assistance” to foreign authorities to enable them to participate in the global program. The U.S. is very much the lead government advancing this regime of control.

This is an extraordinarily powerful law that will further degrade the liberty and citizenship of those Americans who have once been convicted of any kind of “child sexual offense” (including those who were, themselves, children at the time of its commission), permanently exiling them to within the borders of the U.S., regardless of their reason or need to travel and regardless of the number of years that have elapsed since their conviction and completion of sentence. Because of the judicial and legislative conceit that sex offender registration laws are “civil and not criminal”, they have no right of appeal in challenging their status as sex offenders and are subject to the continuous expansion of additional regulations and restrictions placed upon them.

Because the Supreme Court has ruled, in Smith v. Doe, that such regulations are not punishment (though they carry substantial penalties with years of imprisonment) they are not protected by ex post facto prohibitions on punishment.

This bill should be seen as of a piece with concerted global and law enforcement efforts to fully internationalize America’s approach to the total marginalization of the sex offender which has emerged as the dominant standard to which all countries are now judged and expected to conform.

Already, with the travel notification program already in place (though about to be expanded if President Obama signs IML into law) notification of foreign countries by the U.S. government has resulted in the separation of families and spouses and Americans unable to travel in business and who have subsequently lost their livelihoods.

After years of crafting this legislation, Rep. Smith has been unable to come up with substantiated facts or statistics to support his contention that RSOs in foreign travel must be stripped of their travel rights. His argument for IML is simply: a) RSO’s hold passports and are known to travel internationally and b) there are 1.8 million children being trafficked sexually in the world. No further justification for International Megan’s Law is advanced.

This is a terrible development for the rights of all Americans, not just sex offenders, in that it sets a frightening precedent for the incapacitation of American citizens who have entirely exhausted whatever debts to society they may have once had. It is a model for the degradation of the rights of any unpopular minority and thus, a model for a degraded citizenship for all.

Thank you.

Best Regards,

David Kennerly