r/PassportBrosHQ

Ok, so for a long time the State Department could pull the passport of a man with a large amount of back child support and did occassionally. I knew one guy who got his passport pulled back in 2018. He was an oil field construction superintendent, and he owed maybe $450k in child support for kids who were pushing 18. It was a mess.

Anyhow, now the Trump Administration is about to get serious with this effort: The revocation program, plans for which were first reported by the AP in February, soon will be greatly expanded to cover parents who owe more than $2,500 in unpaid child support — the threshold set by a little-enforced 1996 law, the State Department said.

Wow!

There are a lot of guys who will not even know they are short $2500. That is really not much money in the modern world.

Here is the article.

Read the article, and then if you even think you might have a problem, check and be sure you have a record showing you are clear. This is going to end up stopping guys from buying tickets and getting them pulled out of line for interrogation at passport control.

My friend who owed a fortune, he didn't know he owed anything, so check.

EDIT: No, I have no idea about how to find out if there is an old child support lien against you, but I will investigate and post something in the next few days.

I was in Colombia last year. I don't know how people manage to get into so many crazy situations. This guy seems to have been very serious. The article does not make it seem like he was doing the crazy stuff that gets a lot of men in trouble.

Sometimes people are simply too trusting and too sure of themselves. Right now, there is not enough information to know what happened. But one way or the other, he went to Colombia to meet a woman he met online. He ended up dead.

That happens far too often.

Here is the article.

So, this story is a little more complicated. Apparently, he had been in Colombia for months, at least since January, and when he actually married a much younger Colombian woman. Then she backed out, but he stayed in the country to continue his search.

That is one of the most interesting parts of this story, because often guys imagine that the longer you stay in a country the safer you are. No, often that time simply allows the bad guys time to assess your potential as a mark.

It is easy to talk too much about money and influence to people who claim to be your friends. It is easy to fall into patterns that people you have never met can observe and make plans to rob you.

So, who killed him? Who knows.

Anyhow, here is the new article.

Here is my previous post with a link to the first article.

Last Note

One last note, I was really disappointed to see a couple of nasty comments about the guy because he was Jewish. Look, none of us can choose the group we are born and raised in.

Racism is essentially blaming people for the absolute worst things their ancestors or at least people from their group allegedly did. It is fundamentally unfair.

I had relatives I knew well who were not good people. I was a kid when the ones I am thinking about died. I do not deserve any blame for their poor choices. I make enough of my own bad decisions without having to carry water for a truly cantankerous great-great grandfather who died in 1943.

He was such an SOB that when I asked his last living grandson, then 87 years old, about him in 2019 he looked at me, and yelled, "He was a rounder! Why would you want to know about him?"

LOL!

Because he was a character, but he was apparently a more despicable character than I realized. Anyhow, I certainly don't deserve any blame for his bad choices.

As for my ancestors' few successes, I don't deserve any praise for those either, but I do think back and try to emulate their best points and use stories of their success as inspiration in during challenging moments. To me, that is all any of us should really do.

Racism is simply unfair and horribly inaccurate. I try hard to judge everyone on their on merits, because that approach is more fair, more accurate, and in the end makes the world a better place for everyone - including me.

So, there is my anti-racism take. Do with it as you may.

Of course, Thailand is Thailand, and it provides a few extra challenges for men wanting to meet women. These challenges have been made tougher by advances in plastic surgery, and if you are drinking, that really raises the difficulty level.

Without being preachy, this is about all I can write. Please be careful out there, guys, and try to show some good sense. This guy did NOT deserve to be attacked but his lack of judgment was extraordinary.

OK, that's a little preachy.

Stay safe, guys.

Here is the article.