Foreign Service Officer: ORAL ASSESSMENT STUDY GUIDE

To:
Subject:
Steven Sinclair [sinclair_steven@state.gov]
Some Observations on the Consular Section
Steve, I know the Consular Section has been under a lot of pressure for the past several months
to perform up to snuff, especially in the absence of a full time consular officer. Bos West has
been doing his best to cover the section, but I guess he has his hands full with his own Econ
work and the problems the Visa Section is facing. Since Patience’s replacement is due in any
day now, I thought I would mention the following incident to you. The situation is a bit delicate,
so I would appreciate your keeping the information under wraps.
As you know, my wife Sue teaches part time at the American school. One of her co-workers is a
former Peace Corps volunteer who married a Kumani more than ten years ago and stayed in the
country. After years of trying to have a child, Karen was delighted to give birth a couple of
months ago to a baby boy. By all accounts, the kid is a spitting image of his father.
Therein lies the rub. It seems that someone in the American Services Section gave Karen quite a
hard time when she came in to get the baby’s American passport. According to Karen, she was
all but accused of presenting someone else’s baby as her own. In fact, she was asked some pretty
personal questions, which were asked in a way that Karen found very offensive.
Now I realize that fraud in all shapes and forms is pretty common here, and that country women
are willing to give up their own babies for a price to women unable to deliver their own children.
But as far as I can tell from Karen’s story, this problem was not handled with any delicacy or
sensitivity. Karen was in tears when she first told Sue about her visit to the Consular Section,
almost in a state of shock that a Kumani should have been asking her such probing, personal
questions.
Maybe you could raise this – leaving out the names, of course – with the new consular officer.
I’d really appreciate it.
Hed