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As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing whether or not the Visa process for American Visas should be reformed. I came upon an article the other day, it was quite good. It was from Foreign Policy magazine, specifically their website foreignpolicy.com. The article was titled: The State Department's Visa Issuing Authority is in Crisis. Quoting directly: "Finally the authority of Consular Affairs must be recognized within the State Department. The Bureau funds much of State's operations and is responsible for one of its most important duties, the aid and defense of US citizens abroad. Yet for administrative purposes, Consular Affairs is on par with the other 30 or so Bureaus within the State Department. Congress should treat Consular Affairs with the importance it deserves by making the Assistant Secretary of State for Consular Affairs an Under Secretary position that answers only to the Secretary of State or Deputy Secretary of State. That would ensure Consular Affairs has more power over its budget and assignments and a greater say in driving Immigration Policy." Quoting further: "Reforming Consular Affairs could be the first step in reforming the entire State Department just as it was 100 years ago. In the past, it was a truly innovative Bureau that helped to overhaul Washington's foreign policy machine and that can happen again. There has been a lot of talk about the State Department's dire need for reform and the right way to go about doing that in Consular Affairs is the best place to start."

I thought this was rather interesting. The entire article frankly is about something not many people think about but it is about Consular Affairs. Consular Affairs handles what in my opinion are two of the most important things for expats which is visas to the United States which often comes up with respect to loved ones of Americans living abroad as well as American Citizen Services; things like passport issuance etc. The thing that was most interesting in the article and I urge those who are watching this to go read that is basically they bring up a really salient point which is Consular Affairs generates a lot of revenue. They generate fees associated with visas, passport renewal. There are fees associated with Consular processing just generally. These fees are not held on if you will by that particular division. It is brought in and then the money goes out to other places and sometimes they don't really fund Consular Affairs to the extent that maybe they otherwise should. That was kind of the implication in the article. 

The reason I bring it up is, if they do this I think we will see major changes to the overall Immigration process and visa processing at Embassies generally. The question is: "Is that a good thing?" Well presently, the system is not in a very good state. The responses both nationally inside the United States and internationally have resulted in a number of issues with respect to backlogs and just inefficiencies in processing out cases. Maybe some reform is in order. I would say yeah I think it is probably time to take a good hard look at what Consular Affairs does. Yeah, I never really realized, it never really dawned on me, that arguably one of the major segments of an Embassy doesn't have its own Under Secretary. It is dealt with at an Assistant Secretary level which within the bureaucracy is for lack of a better term, a step down. 

They do a really good job in that article going into the history of Consular Affairs and we have seen this with respect to Thai Consulates and Embassies you know where they started off as Honorary Consulates and even in the United States years ago, over 100 years ago, there were a lot of these Honorary positions for lack of a better term, and visa fees were set by the Consul who was in a given country. This was just how they did it back then and it evolved and it became more regimented and they go into the evolution of it but it really was a dynamic force if you will for promoting American interests, be it the interest of Americans abroad or promoting the image of America broad. Yeah I think we could see that again and it would be interesting to see whether or not reform of Consular Affairs would not only improve the Visa process but just the overall operation of Embassies as well.