Who Is Watching the Children?

  Once upon a time, Madam sat on a panel with the post's RSO, consulting doctor, and other pertinent officers and officials to address a gathering of newly-arrived Amcit residents in the district. It was an annual orientation, taken seriously by the local US Chamber of Commerce, the American school, and others who had professional or personal interest in the well-being of these new arrivals.

At one point in the RSO's presentation on how to call for assistance in police, medical or fire emergencies, he said, "And, of course, you'll want to learn enough of the local language to get the help you'll need."

The room erupted with at least a dozen scornful snickers.

 

Madam sincerely hopes that those who expressed such disdain for simple survival did, after all, survive. And she hopes that the annual orientation at that post has continued, with one critical addition.

The advent of the internet - and the Department's sputtering, semi-scizophrenic responses to it's employees' or their dependents' use of it - has raised a new specter, one even more terrifying than Madam's expressions of opinion (although those seem to have been terrifying enough). That specter is happy, homey blogs with titles such as "Our Year in Yerevan" "The Smiths Take On Santiago" "Jacked About Jerusalem" and the like, which are written by spouses with time on their hands and an even weaker sense of safety than those family heads who laughed at the idea of learning a hundred words that might save their and their children's lives. Now that 3 FAM has been driven, snapping and snarling, into a cage, these FS and civilian spouses can safely ....

Ah. But there's the problem, isn't it? They can blog. They can post freely to Facebook. But in the heady joy of blogging and Facebooking they may be placing themselves and their families in more jeopardy than any lack of language could.

With photographs.

Such blogs and FB postings can be freely accessed by friends and loved ones anywhere the world. And by anyone, anywhere in the world or two blocks away, who might consider doing harm to America or, as the country's proxy, any individual American. This ambassador has a bodyguard. Good. Do his sons and his daughter? And now the world knows what they look like.

 Got a grudge against the businessman who didn't hire you, against the president, against the US in its totality? Against the West? Against the world? Here are some potential soft, easy targets for your anger: their names, their relationships, their current color photographs, their car, and their front steps.

 Madam is delighted that these ladies enjoyed their shopping trip. So, perhaps, is the cousin of the man who owns the pottery store; a cousin who was refused a visa last week by one of the  husbands and he doesn't really care whose. And now he has a photograph from which he can choose the easiest target.

WTF would a loving parent be thinking, to direct a camera at these precious babies at an unguarded overseas school, then post those photos for the entire world to see, perhaps to memorize, to print and slip into a pocket, to stalk, to snatch, to gut? There are wolves out there...

Wolves that, if they can't get you, will do far worse. They will get him.

So please seriously ask yourselves and ask your Amcit residents, who is watching the children? And who else?

..................................
PS: due to the number of complaints in the comments, Madam clarifies: except for the first photo, none of these samples are taken from actual Amcit blogs. They were located via a standard Google Image search without "American" in the criteria. Which might serve as a caution in itself; the internet reaches much father than we sometimes imagine.

It's Not Illegal to do Something That's Not Illegal

 How may times has this horror been visited upon sweet, hard-working, unsuspecting line officers?

OMG! A woman! Had a baby! In America! On a B1/B2 visa!

And out come the pitchforks and torches.

While babies can sometimes  be conceived by accident (although not nearly as often as the young might try to convince adults that it's true), they are never born by accident. And those that are born in the US, accidentally or not, acquire citizenship via jus soli.

So what, oh what, is a consular officer to do when faced with a  well-established, pregnant woman who is applying for a B1/B2 visa and dares to tell the truth: she intends to have her baby in the US? A baby that will automatically acquire US citizenship at birth?

Barring any other disqualification, the officer issues the visa.

Does Madam hear the sound of heads exploding all over the world? She is sorry for that, but not as much as those exploders might wish. And now let's make it even worse.

A well-established person applies for a B1/B2 visa in order to travel to the US, marry That Certain US Citizen Someone, and bring him or her home here to Wherever, Planet Earth.

Barring any other disqualification, the officer issues the visa.

Several members of a well-established family apply for B1/B2 visas in order to attend the wedding of a younger family member who traveled to the US on a B1/B2 visa, met That Certain US Citizen Someone, is now getting married, and has no intention of returning home to Wherever.

Barring any other disqualification, the officer issues the visas.

A person applies for a B1/B2 visa in order to travel to the US for a job interview. He/she plans, if hired, to return home to Wherever and wait for the approved petition but that's okay because s/he'll need to tie up a lot of loose ends here anyway.

Barring any other disqualification, the officer issues the visa.

Madam has seen, again and again and again, perfectly qualified applicants refused under exactly these circumstances. However, mes enfants, conoffs do not/not - and have no grounds to - refuse visas...

due to the production of a new US citizen, and thus the possibility of possible future immigration 21 years from now or maybe much later or not at all;

due to suspicion that the applicant might perhaps some day change his/her mind, maybe, maybe not;

for revenge on a family because one member supposedly 'tricked' a conoff into issuing a visa and will now (legally) marry and (legally) adjust status, even though Mom, Dad, Grandma, and Uncle Jamil show no sign of intending to do more than dress well, kiss the bride, eat some cake, and come home;

for someone who fully intends, if hired in the US, to apply for and work under the correct visa category.

There should not be any questions.*

*Footnote, to fend off spurious complaining:
"214(b) Every alien... shall be presumed to be an immigrant until he establishes to the satisfaction of the consular officer, at the time of application for a visa...  that he is entitled to a nonimmigrant status."

03s Rule!

 Last week Madam wrote, accurately enough, that "a single sentence in an EER review statement can doom a good officer to years of undeserved 03-dom. A reader, commenting on Diplopundit, wrote “'03-dom' that is still a career for a large part of the FS. Get real.'

Madam replied, "...that is precisely why I included the adjective ‘undeserved.’ Some FSOs do not deserve and some do not want to move beyond 03, that wonderful level where the rubber meets the road."

Giving the matter further thought, and reviewing her own experience, Madam concludes that she was right. And that there appear to be three different 'types' of 03 FSOs:

1. The standard-issue 03. This is an officer who is passing through the grades, acquiring precious experience and knowledge and expertise that will do him/her well as he/she moves along.

2. The stuck 03. This officer would love to move to higher levels of responsibility but for personal, professional, whatever reasons is somehow not suitable for promotion and the system, however roughly or gently, recognizes this.

3. The professional 03. This officer is happy, productive, highly experienced, and loves that 'rubber meets the road' work in which, every day, there are actual people needing his/her help or advice, and when the phone rings he never knows what's going to happen, but it's going to be cool. He/she doesn't like or want to sit in meetings and make endless formal calls on local officials and the billion other things that 02s and especially 01s do that do not involve hands-on consular work.


Madam has known several officers who worked entire careers in a part of the world that they loved; enjoyed every day enormously; did excellent, rational, sensible, subtle, logical, absorbing, humane and correct work; left customers and staff the better for having known or worked with them; and retired with the well-earned and well-deserved feeling of success.

Some time ago, Madam ruminated on some very good career advice.That advice still holds. Too many FSOs are led - or lead themselves - to believe that they should want to rise to the highest ranks as swiftly as possible and there's something wrong with them if they don't, never mind the stress and headaches and ulcers and hours and distance from concrete reality. They lead themselves to believe that they are wrong to want to accept with joy another 03 job in a neighboring country, in a region that they understand and love deeply, where their family members are happy, and where they wake up every morning with eager anticipation of yet another amusing knot to unravel.

They are not wrong, and the world on both sides of the window is lucky to have them.