The Foreign Service Journal, April 2015

the Foreign Service journal | April 2015 19 more money and takes months or years to achieve. That was a very bad day for me. I am sure I amnot the only Foreign Service officer who has experienced this awkward tension: doing your job right can some- times feel, well, wrong. But we aren’t hired tomake the law; we are hired to apply it. Misfortune of Geography This section of the INA was designed to help the children of unwed moth- ers avoid statelessness. But through the simple misfortune of geography, many border women lose. In Tijuana, about 20 percent of all our CRBA denials are unwed mothers who can’t prove a year of uninterrupted presence in the United States. For border moms, the current application of the INA seems both discriminatory and irrational. Considering that our southern land border stretches from San Diego to the Gulf of Mexico, it is likely that hundreds, if not thousands, of American women cannot transmit citizenship because of this wrinkle in the law. So the question is: should the law treat Americans differently based on their gender and marital status? For border moms, the current applica- tion of the INA seems both discrimina- tory and irrational: there is no compelling reason to believe that women who are unmarried are any less adept at “absorb- ing American culture and values” than are married women, or men. If it were up to me, I would say the solution is to introduce an “either- or” scenario, where unwed mothers can qualify under either the five-year accumulated presence or the one-year continuous presence requirement. But it’s not up to me. It’s up to Con- gress. And until it changes the INA, I will continue to do my job and apply the law, no matter what I think about it. I just hope my next case has a happier ending. n