Sorry folks, it has been a while since I posted. On one level, I feel like I've been doing pretty much the same thing for the last 10 or so weeks, so I don't have a lot to report. But that's not really true; I've had visitors, started different trainings, seen some things here in DC, so I'll try to catch up. And again, I promise to get better at posting.
First off, we had our first visitors - R (friend from high school) and S (friend from college) over Memorial Day weekend. We had a blast! (Well, J. didn't have much to do with the girls' weekend, but the girls had a good time!) We went all over the metro, including the Library of Congress, a couple Smithsonian museums, some of the monuments, a little of Alexandria, a boat ride to Georgetown, and some tasty ethnic cuisine. My feet hurt by the end of their visit. For those of you on facebook, check out our pictures (R & S did all the photos, I'm not much of a camera person...). S & R: I missed you girls - so glad you could make it!!
Last week I also started a new training - Consular General or ConGen for short. This course is Congressionally mandated and includes required tests. Consular work is bound by a ton of regulations (over 13,000 pages), to make sure that we apply the law fairly across the world. Looking at the bigger picture, we're protecting U.S. interests abroad, particularly national security interests. The training also includes relatively lifelike scenarios, such as visa windows and even a fake jail cell, where we will be doing a number of role play scenarios. As a consular officer, I'll be working on mostly immigrant and non-immigrant visas, but I will also spend some time helping with American Citizen Services. Anytime Americans need help overseas, they can contact the embassy, and we consular officers will help as much as we can within the perimeters of the law. A common line I hear in training is that "Consular officers have the best stories." I'm starting to understand why that's true. People come up with the craziest (both factual and fraudulent) stories, and we have to get them to provide us with solid evidence, then apply the law fairly and accurately. I spent at least an hour yesterday with a conception calculator open on my computer, trying to figure out if the alleged father in a given scenario was in the same country as the mother when conception should have occurred ("So you're telling me that your pregnancy lasted 13 months??") Oh, and we're expected to provide good customer service, too, no matter what.
Today I took a test on how to determine citizenship, as well as passport issues and something called the Consular Report of Birth Abroad (aptly named, I think, since it is the official document establishing American citizenship for U.S. children born, you guessed it, outside the U.S.). Happy to report that I didn't miss a single question on the test. "Who is an American citizen" can be a very complicated question when looking at people that are not born in the U.S. (Some day that may be our children, you know). A lot has to do with what law was in effect when someone was born, but it also changes based on whether the parents are married and if one or both are American citizens. Fascinating stuff.
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