Selective Service Registration Issue - a great time to raise it again

[Selene]

This is just the height of insanity. I have a client who I did some excellent work for in the Family Courts, basically by mediating the case away from the court and finding a path for them to solve the dispute by stipulation. Now I am handling his application for citizenship. Wonderful person and family. Hard worker good job union, good father and generally responsible. Been a legal resident for over 12 years. Now there will be an extra risk to overcome to process his citizenship. His parents are citizens and his child is a citizen. This system is so inept. I am constantly amazed by how completely incompetent the entire government is.

The 2008 annual budget was $22,000,000.00 for the year! For a system that just causes more problems. In a country where we have a VOLUNTARY ARMY!

Men cannot register after the age of 26.

According to law, a man must register with Selective Service within 30 days of his 18th birthday. Selective Service will accept late registrations but not after a man has reached age 26.

Registration is the law. A man who fails to register may, if prosecuted and convicted, face a fine of up to $250,000 and/or a prison term of up to five years.

Even if not tried, a man who fails to register with Selective Service before turning age 26 may find that some doors are permanently closed.

See also Men over the age of eligibility to register.

See also What Does Selective Service Provide for America.

Some men may have failed to register during the time they were eligible to do so and may now find they are ineligible for certain benefits.

See What happens if I don't register?

Combined with health care and social security, this should be a home run with anyone under 30.

Adam

Always thinking of politics

WHAT CAN YOU DO IF YOU DID NOT REGISTER AND ARE NOW 26 OR OLDER?

If you have passed your 26th birthday and are now being denied eligibility for Federal student financial aid, Federal job training, or Federal employment, or are having difficulty obtaining U.S. citizenship because you failed to register, you have the the following recourse available to you: Explain to the official handling your case (for example, a student financial aid officer) the reasons for your failure to register with Selective Service. A non-registrant may not be denied any benefit if he can "show by a preponderance of evidence" that his failure to register was not knowing and willful. Offer as much evidence supporting your case, and as much detail, as possible.

[Greybird]

Your subtitle says that this continuing Selective Slavery monstrosity is "another issue libertarians and objectivists refuse to run with." I'd say that is highly unfair, especially in regard to Libertarian Party members. We have been persistent with denouncing this and crusading against this for nearly 30 years. Even in the streets, during Carter's regime. I helped (re)write the provision of the LP Platform that opposed this.

Such an exclusion for nonregistrants as to gaining citizenship, or as to private employment, is unconscionable. I would contend, though, that being locked out of federal employment, subsidies, or benefits, while indeed unfair, is not worth a vigorous crusade.

The only acceptable moral basis for receiving any such benefits is as a partial refund for taxes extorted to support such programs — and only when one opposes them. For federal employment, it depends on whether one's occupation would exist in an unfettered and unregulated economy ... and that's a vanishingly small set, shrinking with every year.

Working to get such benefits or jobs despite such rules mitigates one's thrust in morally opposing them.

Obama isn't about to remove the bar on gays and lesbians from serving in the military without having to lie. He doesn't have the political courage to carry out that explicit promise. That suggests he'd never even talk about removing this implicit, festering Selective Slavery infection from the body politic. The Republicans, as usual, are worse than hopeless.

[Chris Grieb]

During the Clinton years draft registration actually came to a vote in the House where it failed. I think a majority of the GOP and a good number of Democrats voted for it but not enough to make a majority. I don't think it has ever been brought again.

Congress and the White House don't want bring back the draft full force but they want to keep young men jumping by making them register.

By all means let's get rid of it completely.