The Foreign Service Journal, June 2010

F O C U S O N T H E C O N S U L A R F U N C T I O N T HE C ONSULAR R EVOLUTION Jeff Moores 16 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / J U N E 2 0 1 0 f a consular officer from 1980 could be teleported through time to a 2010 consular section, about the only item he or she might know how to use would be the desktop impression seal. A 1980 consular officer certainly would not know what to make of the barcode readers used to capture data from non-immigrant visa applications today. Thirty years ago, the consular section was a clutter of rubber stamps and inkpads, adding machines, cashboxes, four-ply fee receipts and reams of assorted forms, as well as now-obsolete items like green passport typewriter ribbons and trays T HE BASIC QUALITIES GOOD CONSULAR OFFICERS POSSESS — INTEGRITY AND SOUND JUDGMENT — HAVEN ’ T CHANGED . B UT THE TOOLS THEY USE HAVE . B Y A NN B. S IDES I