Foreign Service

When I think about the worst times for an eyeglass malfunction, just before doing a televised interview is toward the top of the list.

Armed with desperation and a staple, I saved the day. 

Eat your heart out, Macgyver. 

…then I guess it makes sense to get some training from professional performers.

I’m back in Washington D.C. for long-term training. Language training starts in September, but there is a lot to learn before that. I will do a yearlong rotation as an “information officer” for post. This will be a new job for me, so I have to receive all the standard training for “public diplomacy” officers.

The highlight of the first class, that just finished yesterday, was two days of off-site training at a theater. A team of professional actors and directors taught us about using our voices effectively, and how our physical posture affects our vocal delivery. This is important for people who will represent our country to understand. We got to practice giving a speech, and received feedback. The feedback was theater-style feedback, not federal government-style feedback. In training sessions that I’m used to attending, feedback is pretty straightforward. It’s almost an afterthought, and it typically isn’t particularly helpful. You get some written or spoken comments on your performance, and then we all move on to the next person.

The culture of theater is different. The purpose of feedback from the director is to change the actor’s performance, immediately. After delivering the feedback, the director wants to see change, now. So at the theater, when it was my turn, I gave my speech. I got my feedback from the director, then I nodded, and got ready to sit down. Wrong. The director wasn’t done with me. Instead of moving on to the next person, the director sat down, and loudly proclaimed: “let’ go again!,” meaning I was to start the speech again. I tried again, doing it the director’s way this time. When I messed up (again), he interrupted me and made me start over (again). It was an experience familiar to anyone who has acted on stage before, but it was very different from how we do things in the State Department. That training style was a departure from business as usual, but that’s not bad. It was a positive learning experience.

My training experiences in this job so far have been positive.  The State Department differs from academia in one striking way: the Department is willing to bring in outside experts to provide training. It’s expensive, which may be a reason why I didn’t experience it as much during my academic career. But we get to learn from experts, and it’s very beneficial. I’ve heard that the training culture in the Department improved when Colin Powell was Secretary of State. I’ve benefited from the effort to improve and increased training that is required of Foreign Service Officers.

For the past two years plus two weeks, my job was to interview people who wanted a visa to go to the United States. I interviewed over 27,000 people. To be exact, I adjudicated 27,377 cases. I said “yes” 18,936 times, and “no” 8,441 times. Every interview was different, of course, but there have been some specific categories of applicants.

Talking with some kinds of people was very pleasant. I really enjoyed issuing visas to these people:

• Parents who were going to America to see their child graduate from University. Especially if the parents were farmers, and their child was getting a PhD from an Ivy League university. Every time that happened, I said to myself: that’s the American dream.
• Gay couples who are going to America to get married, even though they knew that their marriage would not be recognized by their own government when they returned, but who wanted the chance to express their love and commitment to each other, in a country that had a legal mechanism for them to do that. I especially remember the lesbian couple who were going to the US to try to conceive via in vitro fertilization. I really hope that they succeed.
• Children who wanted to experience the wonder of Disneyland, and their parents who wanted the same thing. I always smiled when the parents say that their kid has always wanted to see Mickey Mouse, and the kid is 9 months old. You aren’t fooling me, dude, it’s you who wants to wear the mouse ears!
• Newlyweds who wanted to honeymoon in Hawaii, because they think it’s the most romantic place on earth. Hard to argue with them.
• The woman traveling to the U.S. with her “boyfriend” for two weeks. She was 75 years old, he was 80. They were holding hands like teenagers. Very cute.

There have also been some unpleasant interviews.

• The student who is going to a very expensive university, barely making passing grades, wasting a lot of his parents’ money, without seeming to care.
• Family members going to make final arrangements for a relative who recently died while in America. That happened too often for me.
• The person who wanted to go see a family member in America, who, because he committed a crime on his last trip, is now permanently ineligible for a U.S. visa.
• Parents who believe that they are going to see their child in America, unaware that their child has flunked out of college, is in America illegally, and is doing who knows what.
• The applicant with a stack of documents showing evidence of their job, house, bank statements, documents that were all clearly fake.

I think that I was able to help people, in different ways.

• A person was was applying for a visa for the second time. Reading the case notes from the first interview, it was clear that the applicant was qualified for a visa, but for some reason, he just choked on the interview the first time around. The visa interview is a high-pressure situation for the applicants. Maybe he was calmer this time around, and maybe I was able to help him communicate his situation.
• I refused a woman who was clearly unqualified for a visa, and who I suspected was planning to engage in illegal activities like prostitution in the U.S. By refusing her visa, maybe I kept her out of an American jail.
• A man going to the U.S. on business, clearly a successful young businessman, whose mother happened to be living in the U.S. Is he planning to visit her? I asked. Probably not, was the answer. His parents divorced when he was a kid, his mom remarried and emigrated to the U.S. He hasn’t had any contact with her ever since. After issuing his visa, I mentioned that regardless of the past, a mother would probably be thrilled to hear from her son after so many years, and encouraged him to look her up when he was in the U.S. Maybe he did.
• The young couple, clearly very poor, whose 9-month-old child has a rare form of eye cancer that can’t be treated in China. They said that they got a lot of donations to help them pay for the treatment, and I chose to believe them.

And of course there were cases that I just couldn’t figure out.

• Like the couple who were applying together. She was married to his boss. They claimed that he was going with her to “help” her on vacation, as part of his job. Yeah, right. My guess is that they were having an affair, and were sneaking off to Las Vegas for a hot weekend of illicit nooky. After I asked for a work contract from his boss, to prove that he was really going for work, I never heard from them again. What a surprise.
• Or the divorced couple who claimed that they wanted to get back together, and were using a stressful international trip to a country where they don’t speak the language, to rekindle the romance. Good luck with that.
• And the young man who was dismissed from college because he had mental health problems. He wanted to go to the U.S. to talk with the school and ask them to re-admit him. Did he have an appointment with the school officials? No, and in fact, the school asked him to contact them via Skype. But he thought that it would be “better” for him to show up unannounced in person. That would not have ended well.

My “tour” is now over, and I am moving on to my next assignment. I am sure that I will never forget this tour. The last two years were educational and rewarding. I worked with some excellent people. It’s probably too much to hope that my next tour will be as memorable as this one. So I will cherish the memories of this experience. I have been very lucky. Good-bye, China, and thanks for an eventful two years. It’s been a strange experience. I’m sure that I will see you again some time.

Onward and upward.

I was busy doing four things at once: discussing my annual performance review with my manager, conducting a fraud investigation into a person that I interviewed this morning who turned out to be an alien smuggler, finishing a “cable” on a summer program where foreign college students can go to America for a work and travel program, and analyzing the work trends for the last month. 

As I was walking through our big, crowded office, unconsciously eavesdropping on the five visa interviews that were happening along one wall of the office, making my way back to my desk, smiling to all my coworkers as we passed each other, I realized that I am working in the coolest job that I’ve ever had.

I’m in denial about leaving this post in three weeks. 

The view from my seat: 400 high school students.

I love visiting schools. The students are respectful, enthusiastic and curious. I talk about studying in the U.S., the U.S. college experience, and why they should consider going to college in America.

Schools always roll out the red carpet for us.

My name written in English, but in the Chinese order: surname, then given name.

I had the chance to visit two high schools in Harbin.

They asked me to sign their school yearbook.

“Best wishes,” blah blah blah.

Several of the questions were about financial aid and scholarships. I think that might reflect the “new reality” of the Chinese economy: slower growth and less liquidity.

After my talk, a few students came up to me to ask about emigrating to America. The conversation was a little awkward, because I was promoting U.S. higher education, not brain drain. But I tried to answer their questions without encouraging them either way.

Dancing around the emigration question.