Immigration Control and Adult Entertainment

Given the president's liberal views about guest workers in the United States, I wonder if the paperwork they will recveive with their registration will be adequate to verify their legal adult status for the Title 18 Section 2257 requirements.

Many of you might not be aware of it, but one of the changes to the rules governing the record keeping requirements for adult studios has a direct correlation to the issue of immigrant registration. Until the middle of 2005, it was legal for a producer to accept a government-issued photo id from a performer as proof of age regardless of the government which issued the document. Under the most accepted reading of the current regulations, it is now legal to accept only documents issued by the government of the country where the production is being filmed.

What this means is that Mexican and Canadian performers may no longer appear together in an adult feature if that feature is being produced and sold in the United States. In fact, unless the filming is being done in Canada, no Canadian performers may be involved. Similarly, unless the filming is being done in Mexico, no Mexican performers may be involved. And there is no situation in which a U.S. producer can now legitimately create an adult production which includes scenes containing performers from two different countries working together, unless one of them has legitimately issued ID from the government of the other, and the filming is taking place in the same country where the ID's were issued.

Run that one by me again?

The purported purpose of the new 2257 regulations was to enforce stricter record  keeping requirements in order to help protect minors from being exploited as performers in adult productions. The actual effect is that the interests of U.S. citizens are being artificially raised above those of legitimate artists from other countries, and artistic expression is being limited.

It would be one thing if the new regulations simply took the xenophobic position that only US-issued identification would be considered valid. That is not the case here. Foreign-issued identification is considered legitimate as long as the production is being filmed on foreign soil with performers of the same nationality as the location. No more films made in Germany with performers from Switzerland. No more scenes between French and Italian performers. At least not if the production company is from the United States, and the producers want to stay out of jail.

I'd love to hear the logic of this requirement explained.



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