The Foreign Service Journal, June 2010

24 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 are running out of space. But we aren’t necessarily going to be able to keep hiring more and more people and sending them off to these places. We also have to look at issues. Do we need to assign multiple offi- cers to one window and have them working shifts? Or in China, do we open up visa processing centers in commercial facilities rather than a new consulate? These huge issues are difficult to address given the fact that our government budget cycle requires us to plan years in advance. But we’re preparing. We know that the middle class in those countries is growing at a certain rate every year. And, of course, it’s not just CA, but all of the bureaus that support us that have to be thinking about this, as well. RM: The Bureau of Consular Affairs’ work on children’s issues has also grown a lot in the past few years. A/S Jacobs: The Office of Children’s Issues was just a handful of people back in the mid-1990s; now the office is staffed by nearly 90 people. More and more, these issues are catching the interest of Congress, the press and, cer- tainly, the parents involved, whether they’re adopting or involved in an abduction scenario. We strive to handle these emotional issues carefully and compassionately, but always keep in mind that we are the U.S. government’s central authority for implementing the Hague Conven- tions on international child adoption and child abduction. In every decision, we must be mindful of our responsi- bility in countries that are not signatories of either con- vention. We have to fulfill our consular role in providing services to American citizens. We have to engage in diplo- matic outreach to encourage governments to sign on to these conventions. And we have to monitor whether coun- tries have transparent and fair procedures. In Vietnam and Guatemala, for instance, we have en- countered very serious allegations of corruption and ques- tions about the children being offered up for adoption. Sometimes people think our responsibility is rather nar- row in scope, but it encompasses working with govern- ments on creating good child welfare systems, helping themwith anti-trafficking initiatives and instituting proce- dures to ensure transparent systems. So it’s a huge re- sponsibility, one that garners a lot of attention. We brief Capitol Hill fre- quently and spend a lot of time ex- plaining our role on these issues to the media. RM: What are your goals for the bureau’s interactions on the Hill? A/S Jacobs: We have had a liai- son office on the House side for a few years. We just opened a new office in the Senate. Our liaison staff spends a lot of time research- ing individual cases involving the members’ constituents. This consular presence and assistance serve us well. That also gives us an ear up on the Hill about issues that affect our work. Right now, for example, we’re very inter- ested in immigration reform legislation. No matter what shape it takes, it will affect Consular Affairs. We want peo- ple who are proposing legislation to understand opera- tionally and from a resource perspective what these ideas would mean for us. I don’t ever want people to think that we’re somehow resisting them. Individual cases, of course, will always come up with the members, but so many of the issues that we follow — whether it is immigration reform, adoption or abduction — really catch the interest of members. Our overall rela- tionship with the Hill is so important. We’re always happy to provide briefings and talk to people. So we spend a lot of time up there. RM: About 1,000 employees of the Bureau of Consular Affairs were involved in various aspects of the response to the Jan. 12 earthquake in Haiti. Could you talk about that a bit? A/S Jacobs: Haiti was just a tremendous effort on the part of Consular Affairs. It was unique in that ordinarily, the local authorities and host government would be in the forefront of responding to a disaster. But because of the degree of destruction and the fact that government offices were destroyed, we had to find a new way of handling our issues ourselves, but also in conjunction with other agen- cies. We had a tremendous interagency effort in Haiti. The departments of State, Defense, and Health and Human Services all came together to reach out, to do search and recovery, and to get remains repatriated back to the United F O C U S “We have any number of tools available to us on people we know about. But it’s the people with clean identities who have somehow become a threat.”