Nothing to Hide – Game inspired by government surveillance

Imagine sitting in a chair, behind bullet proof glass, with a room full of people in front of you. You and the other interviewing officers (I was in a very small post, so it was usually me and one or two others) have about 3-4 hours to either approve or reject all of them.

You will end up interviewing about 60 people in this time period (unless you are slow, which hurts everyone). Imagine picking up a passport, calling a name, waiting until they come to the window, asking questions, and determining if someone can come to the US (is this person on the terrorist watch list? Are they likely to illegally migrate to the US?) all in 5 minutes or less.

I was in a post with very high fraud and people illegally overstaying in the US (Guyana), so we had a lot of rejections. I think our average was 50%, but people ranged from 40% to 80%. So, imagine doing all of the stuff I described, but in the end, you reject half of the people. Imagine that most of them plead with you, and say that they have sick relatives in the US, they haven't seen their family in years, or they really need to go for business. The worst were the ones who had a relative that died or was dying in the US and wanted to go for the funeral/to see them one last time, but you couldn't approve them because they were likely to overstay. Things like this make me really hate US immigration policy.

You might be thinking "visas, who cares about those?" because of how easy it is to travel as a first world (I don't like this term, but it is concise) citizen. It is a big deal in countries where visas aren't automatic. Imagine being stuck in one country the size of Maine and unable to visit the rest of the US.

IV (immigrant visa) interviews are more interesting, because your goal is to determine if there is a legitimate family relationship between the two people. You get to examine documents, look at photos, do follow-up interviews, etc. Sometimes you even get to take trips to the persons' house to canvas the area and talk to the neighbors to see if their story checks out. You see a lot of fake birth certificates, and a lot of "marriage" photo albums where the couple is just in a courthouse, signing the marriage paperwork. The main source of fraud here is people from the country getting a fake marriage to an american citizen to allow them to migrate. Usually the american citizen is paid a lot of money or is a relative/friend of the other family. This, too, can be frustrating because american citizen fraudsters who are persistent enough eventually will succeed because of all the bureaucracy.

Luckily, unless you are consular coned, you only have to do one consular tour. My first tour was a split tour, so I only ended up in consular for a year. I did some economic work in the second year, where I talked to economic leaders in the country and wrote cables back to DC. This was more interesting, but like anything in the foreign service, is highly dependent on the competence of your boss. I was not lucky in this regard.

Wow, reading back on this sounds really negative. A good friend of mine (and current FSO) once told me that the Foreign Service is the "same [stuff] as any other job, just in different places." I think this really sums it up. I enjoyed my time in the FS, and enjoyed the country I lived in. I know some really great and intelligent people who are in the FS. I also ended up cutting my first tour short and leaving after 1.5 years. I am really glad I did that, as it enabled me to learn and do a lot of amazing things.

My advice to people who want to join the FS is always -- do it, it will be fun and you will learn a lot, but don't put the job on a pedestal, and don't be afraid to get out when the time comes. It actually is surprisingly hard to leave early on, so do your homework in that sense. Please feel free to email me if you want to talk more about this.

Demand Progress isn't quite so blatant, in that they "question" Democrats, or "suspect" that they might be wrong, but similar judgements of the Republicans are downright hateful.

I don't begrudge their right to engage in "my party's right and your party's wrong" sorts of politics, but I will make sure that none of my money gets spent in furtherance of it.