THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER 2025 49 This is important work that I fully enjoyed and faithfully executed. I have now been RIFed for simply having been in the wrong place at the wrong time. —State FSO An Invitation to China I am a tenured economic-coned officer who has served for eight years. I speak four languages. I received a handshake for a hard-to-fill, 35 percent hardship post. I would have been working to strengthen our critical minerals supply chain. Now that position will remain unfilled. Leaving jobs like this unfilled is like a special invitation to China to come fill the vacuum. —State FSO Losing $18,500 Dollars Every Day I’m an FS-3 consular officer serving in a domestic office as a rover, which means I have spent the last 11 months overseas. My job is to fill in when there are critical staffing gaps in consular sections that could not otherwise be filled. I’ve been working for the State Department for almost a decade and received a RIF notice yesterday. I’m currently overseas, and my phone and email access have been cut off. I don’t have a plane ticket home. I am sitting in a hotel, prohibited from working, collecting per diem because nobody involved in the RIF process thought about this or seems to understand that it is possible to have a job that “lives” in a domestic office but functions solely overseas. This consular section processes enormous numbers of Iranians, Afghans, Iraqis, Syrians, Yemenis, and so forth, but will not have a single visa manager as of Aug. 1. The only managers left will be the American Citizen Services chief and Consular Affairs’ Minister Counselor. In addition to the huge security risk this represents, this is an incredible waste of taxpayer money. I would also note that a typical visa adjudicator earns the department about $18,500 a day ($185 x 100 applications); ensuring that these officers can do their jobs safely and efficiently is not only in the interest of our national security, it’s in our economic interest as well. —State FSO Americans Will Die Alone Ten years ago, I left behind a legal career in middle America to join the Department of State to help protect my fellow Americans as they traveled to all corners of the world. In my decade in the Foreign Service, I’ve held the hand of the dying, pushed the injured and the ill by wheelchair to the airport gate to board a flight home, and reunited the missing and the kidnapped with their families in South Asia, in South America, and in the Middle East. In 2020 I spent months sleeping on my couch (the only place internet reached), alone in a foreign country, with my laptop open to answer emails, and taking middle-of-the-night calls from Americans terrified they would never go home again during the pandemic. I also personally adjudicated tens of thousands of visas that put tens of millions of dollars into the U.S. economy. I’ve missed Christmases and weddings, and I’ve missed saying goodbye to dying family members. I supported a parent through cancer treatment and recovery mostly by phone. I have paid a high price to serve my country. Two years ago, I accepted a two-year assignment in an office in Washington, D.C. On Friday, July 11, I received a RIF notice along with more than a dozen Foreign and Civil Service colleagues in my office alone. I do not expect to be replaced. I expect that Americans will die alone because no one will be there to hold their hand. I expect that injured and ill Americans may never come home because no one will be there to help them navigate the local language and laws. I expect that American parents will never see their children again because no one will be there to advocate for them. —State FSO Do the Math Let’s do the math: A consular officer adjudicating 100 visas per day generates around $4 million per year in visa fees alone. If we add to that the amount of money travelers spend in the U.S. on vacation and the less quantifiable benefits like the value or economic activity that people on work or student visas generate, we are looking at financial gain that is orders of magnitude more than $4 million. Assuming the annual cost of a consular officer is $220,000 (including housing and benefits), we are still talking about a return on investment of more than 18,000 percent on the visa fees alone! —State FSO
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