The Foreign Service Journal, June 2010

J U N E 2 0 1 0 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 21 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 A N I NTERVIEW WITH A SSISTANT S ECRETARY J ANICE L. J ACOBS anice L. Jacobs was appointed assistant secretary of State for consular affairs in June 2008, her sec- ond tour in the bureau’s front office. Following the 9/11 at- tacks, she had served as deputy assistant secretary for visa services, defending the Department of State’s visa issuing authority and leading a series of changes in security pro- cedures. In the following interview, conducted by CA’s Rosemary Macray, Asst. Sec. Jacobs talks about the bureau’s post-9/11 growing pains, describes how that experience eased the in- teragency response after the attempted Christmas Day bombing, and explains how the bureau is rising to meet its other challenges. RM: The Bureau of Consular Affairs has undergone a dramatic transformation since Sept. 11, 2001. What was your role during this period and what were the bureau’s greatest challenges throughout the period? A/S Jacobs: Not too long after 9/11, Assistant Secretary Maura Harty called me in Santo Domingo to ask if I would come back to Washington to be the deputy assistant sec- retary for visa services. I very quickly said yes, and I remember Maura saying, “Don’t you want to take some time to think about this? Have you been reading the newspapers?” Secretary [of State Colin] Powell had been defending the State De- partment’s handling of the visa function against those who wanted to hand it over to the new Department of Home- land Security. I told her that I knew it would be very chal- lenging, but I accepted that challenge. It was a very difficult time for the Bureau of Consular Affairs. The changes that we had started to make in the visa process represented a totally new way of doing busi- ness, and I was surprised that a lot of people in the build- ing did not realize that. They didn’t understand that we were having to interview every visa applicant and that we were going to start including biometrics with our visas. So there was a lot of questioning within the building and within Consular Affairs about what we were doing on visas. There had been about a 40-percent drop in the number of visitors coming to the United States in the immediate af- termath of 9/11. Some people were afraid of flying, some thought that the U.S. was less welcoming, and some may have even thought we weren’t issuing visas anymore. There was also a global downturn in the economy. Within the building, our colleagues didn’t realize that the visa changes were based on laws, as well as Govern- A/S J ACOBS PROVIDES A CANDID LOOK AT THE CHANGES CA HAS MADE SINCE 9/11 AND ITS PLANNING FOR FUTURE CHALLENGES . B Y R OSEMARY M ACRAY J Rosemary Macray is chief of the Media Unit in the Con- sular Bureau’s Office of Policy Coordination and Public Affairs. Her previous Foreign Service postings include Mexico City, Quito and Buenos Aires.