r/PassportBrosHQ

So, in a past life, I was a college professor. Yes, oh how the mighty have fallen!

In classes, my policy was to really encourage students to state their opinions. As long as it was an opinion, I was fine with it and I mostly even resisted the urge to push back in the know-it-all way that many professors find so much fun.

But when students made clear mistakes of facts, I would correct those facts. Sometimes I could not do it until the next class, because I wanted to be 100% sure about it when I made this sort of a public correction, but I felt I could not let factual mistakes go uncorrected. Usually, I would even pull the student aside before class and let them know I was about to demolish their statement in class. That's what I am doing today.

Ukrainian Brazilians

Last week, I posted a video about Ukrainian Brazilians. The video seemed OK and I saw no reason to do a deep dive on the topic. I just assumed the woman in the video was correct.

Then I had several guys push back that the video was wrong. The people they showed were not Ukrainian Brazilians but German Brazilians. One or two were particularly adamant.

So, I did a deep dive.

The Evidence

According to Wikapedia there were 600k in 2021, and there has been a significant population growth since Putin invaded Ukraine in 2022. You can check out that article here.

Here is an article on the history of the community.

BUT I understand how easy it is to make this mistake because there are far more German-Brazilians, roughly 10X as many, probably more. I will write something on them sometime soon.

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.

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.