And What About The Rest of That Story?

Here are a few simple rules of speedy, productive interviews, gathered over many years from mentors, co-consuls, subordinates, and experience. More suggestions for this list are warmly welcomed.

 1. Be Nice
     The good applicants will appreciate civility and good manners; the
     'bad' applicants will be disarmed by them. In any case, never forget
     that you are the only American these people might see today.
     Impress them with your calm, courtesy and professionalism,
      even in a refusal. Especially in a refusal.

2. Ask, Don't Tell
    "Where will you stay?" not "So you'll stay in a hotel in New York City?"
    "What is the purpose of your trip?" not "So it's a business trip."
    Why? To assure that the applicant actually knows what the application says.

3. If it Doesn't Matter, Don't Ask
    Don't waste time on questions whose answers are irrelevant.

4. Always Ask the Next Question
    If the story seems shaky or overly generalized, ask for pertinent details: "With
    whom will you conduct these business meetings?" "What will you see on the
    tour?" "What is your schedule of appointments?" "When did your niece meet
    her fiance?" People don't lie all that well; they run out of answers and end up
    at the end of the twig with nowhere further to go.

 EEK! I'm out of answers!

 5. Don't Ask a Question if You're Not Sure You Want to Hear the Answer.
     Most pertinent to ACS cases, often taking the form of "Why on earth...?" or
     "Honey, what were you thinking?"

6. Look It Up
    The internet is everywhere in the consular section. Applicant is going to a
    symposium or conference? A few seconds will assure you whether or not
    such a meetup will actually take place. If so, there will usually be a schedule
    of events or presentations that you can ask about if necessary.

7. If There's One Fib, It's All Untrue
    If the conference is not happening, the hotel doesn't exist, the dead guy didn't
    die and so is not having a funeral, the interview is over. You don't need the
    preponderance of evidence, just a single pertinent untruth and you're done.

8. If the Story Seems Unlikely But Hangs Together, It's True
    Again, people don't lie all that well. You will quickly get to know the specific lies
    that your applicants are likely to tell - and yes, they vary from post to post. If
    the applicant never runs out of answers to increasingly detailed questions,
    he's telling the truth.

9. Don't Agonize
    This revolutionary, nearly insidious, idea has long been perpetuated by the most
    realistic and professional consular managers: one shouldn't let the perfect be the
    enemy of the good. Grab a solution that seems reasonable and get on with life.

    Issuing a visa to a person who does not return is not the end of the world - only,
    sometimes, the source of some teasing. As a friend and colleague puts it, "Most
    officers I knew considered ... denying a case with weak visible ties but genuine
    intent to be preferable to (issuing an intending immigrant). The rationale was that
    the genuine would-be tourist with few visible ties suffered no major harm and
   could vacation somewhere else, but the sneak who got in somehow 'damaged'
   the USA."

   He probably doesn't, probably won't, and the world will not explode if you decide
   wrongly.

 
    Just make up your mind and get on with it.

10. He Paid for the Visa, Not for the Interview
      Madam has watched officers drag out interviews with totally qualified
      applicants. When asked why, the officer would reply, "I feel like I owe
      them my time."

      No, you don't. All you owe them is a clear, prompt decision. A perfectly
      adequate NIV interview might consist solely of "Good morning. Your visa
      will be ready for pickup tomorrow. Have a good day." And a smile.

Iatrogenesis At Work

This title is understood, in the outside world, to refer to the creation of illnesses or complications by well-intentioned medical treatment. Here in our little consular universe, it refers to the type of NIV fraud that is practiced by applicants who are perfectly qualified under the law but who believe that telling the truth will not be good enough. And, as the world knows, the majority of applicants only get, at most, one fair chance. After that it's nearly all, always, routine re-refusals. So they doctor the application and only turn a good one bad. Or they get the visa anyway, but attribute that 'win' to the doctoring process and are encouraged to advise others to do the same.

 The lawyer is right - but is also wrong. Most interviews are less than 5 minutes.

Remember our dear friend Ali? This entrepreneur was able to send all his children to the colleges of their choice because of iatrogenesis; because visa applicants paid him to produce fraudulent documents to bolster their applications, even if there were no grounds under which, if telling the truth, they would or should have been refused. Because even the best qualified among them were sure that the truth would not work.

(Let Madam be clear here: she does not refer to those applicants for whom, no matter what documents they bought, there was no possibility in this world or the next that they would qualify for visas. They are a whole different group of - admittedly wonderful and highly entertaining - applicants. Who here doesn't remember favorite refusals far more clearly and fondly than favorite issuances? Madam thought so.)

Here is a brand-new-very-old news flurry about 'baby hotels' and about women paying huge amounts of money to 'fixers' who help them apply for NIVs, prepare for consular and CBP interviews, and travel to the US to give birth. The news footage on TV was dramatic. And yet, as we all know, having a baby in the US is not illegal. Traveling to the US to have a baby is not illegal. According to the story, "Zoning laws have generally been the primary legal tool against maternity hotels, since it is not illegal for pregnant foreigners to visit the United States or to give birth while visiting. And while lying to get a tourist visa is illegal, it is not easy to prove."


Zoning laws, the terror of the 214(b).


And the part about 'lying to get a tourist visa is illegal?' Does that mean the ladies should be permanently ineligible in the future because of fraud? 212(a)(6)(c) please? No. If the lie is not material - that is, if she would have qualified for the visa has she told the truth - the lie is not fraud. CA has reminded us of this, oh, maybe a jillion times. Maybe more than a jillion.

Imagine how pleasant life would have been for these ladies - all of whom, apparently, were wealthy and were fully intending to go home - had they been able to simply tell the truth. Instead they felt they had no choice but to be led through a maze of shady dealings and pay a huge amount to fixers. But had they told the truth, and had consular officers issued the visas to which they were entitled, they might have worried far less. They might have stayed in the Hilton San Gabriel, with room service, instead of a shabby boarding house surrounded by suspicious neighbors. They might have saved the money they paid the fixers to more easily pay the doctors and hospitals who delivered their babies. They might have made generous down payments on the babies' eventual US educations.

A highly experienced and highly pragmatic officer of Madam's acquaintance once observed "Every bona fide applicant given a 214(b) is living PROOF that other NIV applicants should not just tell the truth. They should buy fraudulent docs that puff up their income. They should lie about relatives in the USA, and civil status. They should say they plan to stay 2 weeks and not 2 months. Soon everyone is giving us fraudulent docs and telling us lies." And soon every consular officer believes he has reason to disbelieve every applicant, so refuses nearly everyone, proving that the applicants' original suspicions were true. So next time, if there is a next time, they'll lie even harder.

 Iatrogenesis Ourobouros, and so it goes

Aim For The Crash

Watching NASCAR races on TV puts Madam in mind of an instructor at the Crash and Bang Course (which was sometimes more sternly called the DSAC and which she strongly recommends that consular officers take as often as possible). The man said, "In auto racing we learn that, if there's a crash on the road ahead, don't try to stop because you'll get rear-ended and don't try to dodge around it because it's still moving. Instead, aim directly for it; by the time you get there, it will be somewhere else."

(Everybody survived)

And yes, Madam mostly watches the races for the crashes. Make something of it. She dares you.

She also reads inspection reports for the crashes. And has been known, when asked, to recommend troubled posts for ongoing assignments for the many consular officers who want something gristly to chew into submission; a Gordion knot to untangle; a wild horse to bend to the bit. Not to mention work worth doing, a great EER, a good reputation, and a promotion.

If the NASCAR model works, though, shouldn't it be true that by the time an officer gets to a badly-reviewed post it will be all better and there will no longer be anything to gnaw/untangle/bridle? No, because it seems to take much, much, much longer for bad posts to clear up than for cars to slide into the infield. She remembers the years - year after year after year - that a certain North African post carried a terrible reputation through inspection after inspection, change after change of officers, for decades.

So the same problems will be there? Some of them. And maybe some new ones. But, like so many NASCAR crashes (and most magic), such crashing and burning always/always looks, sounds and smells a lot more terrifying and complicated than it actually is.

Here is a great example. Keep in mind as you read the consular portion of this report that  inspectors are masters of understatement.

The head of this consular section didn't suffer for his genuinely awful management, since he was strolling into retirement anyway.* And careful reading reveals a large section populated with  smart, honest, competent employees - both FS and local - eager to do a better job than they were allowed to do. Once you've read that report, read a few others and you'll see the same pattern: worker already in place, most of whom are desperate to do a good job and all they need is a sane, serious, fearless, trusting and trustworthy hand to help them. Let such a hand it be yours. And, of course, give all the credit to them, which will reflect onto you and everybody wins. Without the noise and flying auto parts.

So, thinking about job hunting? Read inspection reports. Unlike NASCAR crashes, those targets move very, very slowly. Choose the one you find most enticing (smelly, tangled, inexplicably awful), would love to tackle, and go for it. With cleverness, imagination, application of laws and regs, cheering from CA, and confidence, you can fix it. Then, unlike #21 and #33 above, everybody will win.

And if you ever hear that that Crash and Bang Course is on, beg, borrow, steal, horsetrade or fib your way into it. It is extremely valuable: Madam credits what she learned there with three misses of what could have been very close calls. And it's terrific fun.

*This phenomenon, in which what used to be a highly-regarded, highly competent officer simply quits working, is referred to as RIP - Retired In Place.