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Title 22, Foreign Relations and IntercourseRelease 119-102

§4207 Profits From Dealings with Discharged Seamen; Prohibition

Title 22 › CHAPTER 52 — FOREIGN SERVICE › SUBCHAPTER XIV — POWERS, DUTIES AND LIABILITIES OF CONSULAR OFFICERS GENERALLY › § 4207

Last updated Aug 21, 2026|Official source

Summary

U.S. consulate workers must not charge or take any fee for handling or paying the wages, extra pay, or cash advances for sailors who are discharged in another country or who ask the consulate for help. They also must not make money from providing clothes, food, or sending those sailors home. But a consulate worker who owns or has a stake in a U.S. ship may carry a sailor on that ship and receive the reasonable travel payment the law allows.

Full Legal Text

Title 22, §4207

Foreign Relations and Intercourse, Source: USLM XML via OLRC

No consular officer, nor any person under any consular officer shall make any charge or receive, directly or indirectly, any compensation, by way of commission or otherwise, for receiving or disbursing the wages or extra wages to which any seaman or mariner is entitled who is discharged in any foreign country, or for any money advanced to any such seaman or mariner who seeks relief from any consulate; nor shall any consular officer, or any person under any consular officer, be interested, directly or indirectly, in any profit derived from clothing, boarding or otherwise supplying or sending home any such seaman or mariner. Such prohibition as to profit, however, shall not be construed to relieve or prevent any such officer who is the owner of or otherwise interested in any vessel of the United States from transporting in such vessel any such seaman or mariner, or from receiving or being interested in such reasonable allowance as may be made for such transportation by law.

Legislative History

Notes & Related Subsidiaries

Editorial Notes

Codification R.S. § 1719 derived from act Aug. 18, 1856, ch. 127, § 20, 11 Stat. 59. Reference to “commercial agency” was omitted in view of the abolition of the grade of commercial agent by act Apr. 5, 1906. Section was not enacted as part of the Foreign Service Act of 1980 which comprises this chapter. Section was formerly classified to section 1187 of this title, and prior thereto to section 90 of this title.

Reference

Citations & Metadata

Citation

22 U.S.C. § 4207

Title 22, Foreign Relations and Intercourse

Last Updated

Aug 21, 2026

Release point: 119-102