The Foreign Service Journal, September 2015

36 SEPTEMBER 2015 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL the Immigration and Nationality Act over the past few decades is likely in the tens of thousands. This is a serious issue. It mer- its attention. In reaching out about our cable, we also got some intel. Apparently, the Bureau of Consular Affairs has been advo- cating change on this issue for years. In 2014, they sent an action memo to the Bureau of Legal Affairs to find a vehicle for amending Section 309(c)—though it’s unclear if anything has come of it yet. 4. Work within the hierarchy and push for change. Any- one who has gone through a clearance process knows how painful it can be. I personally thought giving birth was easier. Our cable took six months to clear, and had a list of clear- ances that was probably longer than the cable’s total read- ership. Reworking every draft that came was an exercise in patience. At the time, in my inexperienced ELO haste, the edits were excruciating, as entire paragraphs we had agonized over got sliced clean away. But I’ve changed my mind about that. Every edit was worth it. When the cable was finally released, it surged out on a wave of momentum, carrying with it the full support of Mission Mexico. As a result, that cable rang out to the department with a clearer, more resounding voice than we could ever have achieved on our own. Incidentally, two hours after our cable hit the wires, a north- ern border post from Canada released a cable on the very same issue—on the very same day. A bizarre but timely coincidence. After decades of silence on this issue, what are the chances that two cables would come from separate border posts in Mexico and Canada on the same day? Our entire ACS section in Tijuana cheered. It felt like we had just hit the establishment with a continent-sized one-two punch. The drafting officer in Toronto later told me that Canada has been pushing for years to change the transmission require- ments for unwed moms under INA 309(c). When they heard that Mexico was doing a cable on it, they wanted to be part of the movement. Me, I couldn’t help thinking about chaos theory—how the force of a hurricane can be influenced by a butterfly’s wing. Get Real So let’s be real. I would probably have more luck at finding Jimmy Hoffa than I would at inducing Congress to amend an obscure part of the INA. But that’s not the point. About a year ago, I was again rounding that dirty old field and trying to catch up with the CG. Our cable was written, but it was languishing in that no-man’s land of clearances with no end in sight. “It doesn’t matter if your cable goes nowhere,” he said, look- ing over the scrub brush to the horizon. I’d been running along, listening to him talk about his career, how hard it is sometimes to get beyond the bureaucracy and feel like anything one does actually has any impact. “It’s really rare to make a change. Sometimes,” he said, “it’s all you can do to add your voice.” We ran in silence for a few paces, dodged a bit of scrub. And then he added, “No matter what, be proud of this. It’s impor- tant." So I can’t say I stood up to an unjust war or risked my career to expose some glaring injustice inside the State Department. But I stand next to officers who have. I am deeply honored. And grateful to AFSA, for helping to create a safe space for dissent. On the face of it, all I did was co-write a cable and submit an article on an issue I felt was unfair. I won an award probably because few other people bother to do this sort of thing. I’m not belittling the achievement. I am proud that I found a constructive way to take a stand on an issue that matters to me. But I can’t help wondering what the department would look like if there were more of us willing to speak up about issues that matter, large and small, regardless of whether or not we think we can actually change anything. Or as one senior officer pointed out to me, we dissent every day—but the difference is whom we dissent to and how far we are willing to go with it. At heart, it’s a question of integrity. Sometimes just adding your voice is enough. n As one senior officer pointed out to me, we dissent every day—but the difference is whom we dissent to and how far we are willing to go with it.