The Foreign Service Journal, June 2010

18 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 T he visa applicant at the counter glanced anxiously over his shoulder at the crowd in the waiting room. He leaned toward me, his face so close to mine that I could smell his cigarette breath. “I am Jesus Christ, the son of God,” he whispered. “I must go to America.” Behind me, I heard a click as Sarah, my senior FSN, quietly picked up the phone, prepared to dial the guards outside. “Why must you go to America?” I asked, although I knew the answer. The Savior, as we called him, came to us most Wednes- days. That was the day the local mental institution allowed some of its patients out on furlough. They were supposed to be harm- less. I hoped so; in 1985 our tiny North African post had no hard- line, no blast-proof glass service windows and no Marines. “I must be about my father’s business, Madame,” the Savior responded, predictably. He had a little forked beard and wore a long djellaba. He actually looked like the holy picture on my grand- mother’s bedroom wall. “Do you have an invitation? Traveler’s checks? Round-trip ticket? Sorry, you don’t fulfill the conditions for a visa ...” The practiced phrases fell from my lips. “God will provide,” the Savior replied serenely, and departed. It cost nothing to submit a visa application, and people like the Sav- ior kept coming back. Behind me, Sarah resumed stamping visas. She fitted each passport into an adapted Burroughs check-writing machine, and slammed down the crank handle. The metal visa plate in the ma- chine slapped against a wide silk ribbon inked in a pattern of red, green and blue stripes, printing the visa onto the passport page. I noticed the colors of the stamped visas were losing their brightness and sighed. I would soon have to dismantle the machine and change the ribbon. I had no talent for mechanics, but only com- missioned consular officers were allowed into the guts of the visa machine. I seldom tackled the ribbon without getting ink all over myself. I decided to come in over the weekend in jeans and T-shirt and do it then. I was in my office, winding up an interview with an immigrant visa applicant, when Bob and Debbie Smith strolled in with their new baby. They both worked for an oil-drilling outfit. I’d performed my first official act as vice consul a year earlier when I attended their wedding and issued the Consular Certificate of Witness to a Marriage. Now they’d come to register their new baby. While they filled out the paperwork, I opened the safe and got out a blank passport and the engraved Consular Report of Birth Abroad certificate. I recorded the passport and CRBA numbers in a grubby green ledger. I remembered, guiltily, that I had not yet done the required monthly inventory of controlled items. It took hours to count all the unissued passports, all the soon-to-be- phased-out American Citizen ID cards, the consular birth certifi- cates, immigrant visa blank forms, passport and visa ribbons, rubber stamps, notarial seals, visa plates, and the wax seal with its sticks of red wax. I decided to save that chore, too, for the week- end. While Sarah rolled a blank passport into the typewriter, I invited the Smiths into the consulate kitchen for coffee. After typing in the baby’s data, Sarah heated up our steam iron, put a few drops of white Elmer’s Glue-All on the back of the baby’s photo, placed it in the passport, spread a sheet of tissue paper over the picture, and bonded photo to passport page with a quick sweep of the iron. She sealed the picture with the consulate seal and the embossed Department of State legend. Sarah was good: she could do a com- plete passport in 15 minutes. We then added the baby’s name to the couple’s registration file card, and stapled his photo on the back of the card next to those of his parents. After the Smiths left, I ate a late lunch at my desk. Intending to spend my afternoon balancing the consular fee collection, I had the handwritten receipts piled on my desk and the adding machine set up, but I kept getting interrupted. Earlier in the day I’d inter- viewed a French visa applicant with what appeared to be impecca- ble qualifications — until I noticed a recently dated “Application Received AmEmbassy Paris” stamp in the back of his passport. I’d told him to come back in two weeks. Now I turned on the mi- crofiche reader, and tried to find the applicant’s name among the many similar ones on the lookout list. The tiny, blurry print made my eyes water. The microfiche was over two months out of date; useless. I sighed. I’d have to draft a cable to Paris, asking details of the visa refusal. At the service counter, a visitor claiming to be a naturalized U.S. citizen was applying for a replacement of what he claimed was a lost passport. The story sounded fishy; I’d have to do a cable on that one, too, and wait for Washington’s response. As the afternoon wore on, I checked the issued visas against the application forms to make sure I’d authorized all of them. Then I went through the mail from Washington, including a dozen newly revised Foreign Affairs Manual pages and the transmittal letter that F O C U S 25 Years Ago: A Day in the Life of a Consular Officer By Ann B. Sides