[Congressional Bills 115th Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
[H.R. 3512 Introduced in House (IH)]

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115th CONGRESS
  1st Session
                                H. R. 3512

To make certain countries ineligible to be designated as a beneficiary 
  developing country for purposes of receiving preferences under the 
       Generalized System of Preferences, and for other purposes.


_______________________________________________________________________


                    IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

                             July 27, 2017

   Mr. Smith of New Jersey introduced the following bill; which was 
              referred to the Committee on Ways and Means

_______________________________________________________________________

                                 A BILL


 
To make certain countries ineligible to be designated as a beneficiary 
  developing country for purposes of receiving preferences under the 
       Generalized System of Preferences, and for other purposes.

    Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the 
United States of America in Congress assembled,

SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.

    This Act may be cited as the ``Bindu Philips and Devon Davenport 
International Child Abduction Return Act of 2017''.

SEC. 2. FINDINGS.

    Congress finds the following:
            (1) In 2016, 629 American children were taken from the 
        United States by one parent without the consent of the other, 
        often in direct violation of valid United States court orders, 
        United States criminal law, and the Hague Convention on the 
        Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction.
            (2) Abducted children in a foreign country are often 
        blocked from any contact with the American parent, losing half 
        of their family and heritage.
            (3) Such children are also at grave risk of serious 
        emotional and psychological problems. Many such children 
        experience anxiety, eating problems, nightmares, mood swings, 
        aggressive behavior, resentment, and fear. Every day the 
        abduction continues only compounds these harms.
            (4) The Department of State had at least 944 open cases of 
        child abduction in 2016, only 152, or 16 percent, of which were 
        resolved with return of the abducted child to the United 
        States.
            (5) Tragically, abductions resolved with a return of the 
        child to the United States hit a three-year low in 2016.
            (6) In contrast, the number of abduction cases closed by 
        the Department without the child being returned reached a high 
        mark of 189 in 2016.
            (7) Such low return rates encourage parents to abduct their 
        children rather than to abide by the laws of the United States.
            (8) The United States is a party to the 1980 Hague 
        Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child 
        Abduction (``Hague Abduction Convention''), which provides a 
        framework for the prompt resolutions of international 
        abductions between the United States and the 76 other countries 
        with which the United States has reciprocal obligations.
            (9) The Hague Abduction Convention does not have an 
        enforcement mechanism and countries regularly ignore their 
        legal duty--without consequences--to return abducted children 
        whose habitual residence is the United States.
            (10) In the 2017 Annual Report on International Parental 
        Child Abduction published by the Department of State, nine 
        countries were identified as demonstrating a ``pattern of non-
        compliance'' for failure to comply with legal obligations under 
        the Hague Abduction Convention to resolve ongoing abductions, 
        including Argentina, the Bahamas, Brazil, the Dominican 
        Republic, Ecuador, Guatemala, Panama, Peru, and Romania.
            (11) The report also identified four countries without an 
        established reciprocal relationship with the United States 
        under the Hague Abduction Convention as demonstrating a 
        ``pattern of non-compliance'' for failure to work with the 
        United States to resolve abduction cases, including India, 
        Jordan, Nicaragua, and Tunisia.
            (12) Eleven of the thirteen countries so identified for 
        non-compliance, other than the Bahamas and Romania, are 
        currently receiving trade benefits under the Generalized System 
        of Preferences established by the Trade Act of 1974.
            (13) In India, where more than 100 children are being held 
        against the wishes of their American parent, only 10 came home 
        in 2016, and 66 percent of United States requests for the 
        return of abducted children from India have remained unresolved 
        for more than 12 months.
            (14) After eight years of heroic legal efforts in the 
        United States and India to bring home her twin sons, who were 
        abducted to India in 2008, Bindu Philips saw her case closed by 
        the State Department in 2016 without their return.
            (15) Brazil has been continuously cited for demonstrating a 
        pattern of non-compliance since 2005, and has neither issued 
        nor enforced a court order to return a single one of the long 
        term cases there since the return of Sean Goldman to his 
        American father in 2009, after international pressure and the 
        stalling of Brazil's renewed participation in the Generalized 
        System of Preferences.
            (16) Thirteen cases of abducted American children in Brazil 
        have been pending from 2.5 years to 10 years.
            (17) Dr. Christopher Brann has been reduced to seeing his 
        young son Nico for only a few weeks of the year, and only in 
        Brazil, since 2013, when Nico's Brazilian-American mother 
        abducted Nico to Brazil in violation of pre-existing court 
        orders in Texas granting shared custody, in violation of the 
        Hague Convention, and despite ten independent assessments that 
        he is an excellent father.
            (18) Devon Davenport has won each of the 24 appeals in his 
        case in Brazil for the return of his daughter, Nadia Lynn, 
        since 2009, but Brazil still has not returned his daughter to 
        him.

SEC. 3. ADDITIONAL LIMITATION ON BENEFICIARY DEVELOPING COUNTRY 
              DESIGNATION.

    Section 504(b)(2) of the Trade Act of 1974 (19 U.S.C. 2462) is 
amended by inserting after subparagraph (H) the following:
                    ``(I) Such country has engaged in a pattern of 
                noncompliance in cases of child abduction, as 
                determined by the Secretary of State for purposes of 
                the notification requirement under section 101(f) of 
                the Sean and David Goldman International Child 
                Abduction Prevention and Return Act.''.
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