Interesting viewpoint. The writer’s analysis of the State Department culture is pretty much correct.
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President Trump has a prospective ally in the war on Muslim immigration, and I am not talking about the patriots in the U.S. Border Patrol (USBP) or U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Removal Operations (ICE ERO), as previously discussed in the issues President Donald J. Trump will deal with on Inauguration Day. Trump’s ally in the war on Muslim immigration will be the blue-blooded pretentious fools who run the Department of State.
The Cultural Marxists who dominate the Foreign Service are the worst of the worst in America’s ruling class; pretentious, maleducated, an abundance of unearned sense of accomplishment. These are the vile excuses for human beings who are the bureaucracy that runs American foreign policy. Graduates of Yale, Harvard, and Georgetown, they have high opinions of themselves, and nothing to support their belief in their own abilities. The attitude in the Department of State (DOS) is similar to the pretensions of the founders of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), or at least the stereotype.
While in the 50s one could hand it to the WASPs who ran the country, sort of. They really failed in the run up to the Second World War. The U.S. could have reached an accommodation with Imperial Japan and even Germany, as those who thought this was their country gave us George Kennan and Yalta. Thanks for nothing.
But these pretentious jerks at State will not be the enemy in President Donald J. Trump’s efforts to control Muslim immigration. One would think that the run-of-the-mill pretentious jerk from overrated east coast universities would hate The Donald. And they do, and will hate President Trump.
But because of their pretentious narcissism they will end up being an ally to The Donald, at least in the area of immigration. Despite what many presume, the DOS and the Foreign Service Association (FSA), the professional association for Foreign Service Officers (FSO) and Foreign Service Specialists (FSS), really don’t like what is part of their duties, that what is called Consular Affairs (CA) work.
In the Foreign Service (FS) bureaucracy there is, like any other organization, a hierarchy. In this case, the hierarchy is formally divided; in the FS it is this in descending order of prestige: Political Officers, Public Diplomacy Officers, Economics Officers, Management Officers, and, at the bottom, Consular Officers. These are the five career tracks in the Foreign Service. And while everyone generally serves an assignment in each, specialization and prestige is segregated.
Generally, the first assignment to an Foreign Service Officer (FSO) is to Consular Affairs, but then the high flyers go to PO, PDO, and EO, with the rest segregated to MO and CO duties. Consular Affairs consists of the worst assignment, either dealing with the Ugly American overseas, e.g. lost passports, complaints, and arrested Americans in Third World jails; or visa applications by aliens. Nothing there prepares one for high flying diplomacy. It is the drudgery of Foreign Service work and overwhelmingly avoided and denigrated by FSO themselves. After one’s initial assignment, it is avoided like the plague. And for good reason, the work is boring, pointless, and of no career importance.
And that is why the smug blue-bloods will have no problem helping The Donald end Muslim immigration.
First, the major source at the moment of Muslim immigration is refugees. FSOs hate refugee work and avoid it. Furthermore, since FSOs hate the work, that work has been outsourced to contractors and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) personnel seconded to American diplomatic posts overseas. The USCIS personnel overseas are mostly from the Refugee, Asylum, and International Operations Directorate. While some other USCIS personnel are overseas, mostly from the Fraud Detection and National Security Directorate, most of the USCIS employees overseas deal with refugees of some kind, generally from the Rome and Bangkok offices. Universally, the Foreign Services hates U.S. Government employees from other agencies detailed overseas or to DOS posts. It’s a cultural thing, they just hate any non-DOS employee overseas. And Foreign Service Officers also hate other DOS employees who aren’t FSOs, the FSSs.
Now most refugees apply for entry to the United States as refugees through the United Nations bureaucracy or international refugee support groups, who in turn refer refugees to American diplomatic posts overseas to apply for refugee status. Such applications are processed by either a Consular Officer or, more likely, a USCIS employee, assigned overseas from the above Refugee, Asylum, and International Operations Directorate. Processing refugee applications is considered even less prestigious than processing visa applications. Consular Officers at DOS avoid the duty and are more likely to deny refugee applications than USCIS Asylum Officers and other detailed employees assigned overseas. They are both more discerning than USCIS Asylum Officers and less interested in doing that work. There is no career advancement or prestige in processing refugees even for a Consular Officer.
And here President Trump can work with the pretentious jerks in the FS to end Muslim immigration. The solution is to withdraw all USCIS personnel from overseas posts, move those employees from the much coveted sinecures in Rome and Bangkok, the two offices most concerned with processing refugees, and return those USCIS personnel home. The FS will be happy to see USCIS personnel sent home and the DOS will assign little priority to those applications that come in. More importantly, rather than processing refugees from Rome or Bangkok, the refugees will have to apply in either their nation of origin or in the geographical area, and the more discerning COs will be denying more refugee applications, and more importantly, will not even be processing or accepting most applications, much less bothering to actually adjudicate what they know is mostly fraudulent. The DOS will even be happy to end the cozy relationship with the UN agencies and Non-Governmental Organizations (NGO) that dominate refugee policy, as neither the UN or refugees offer any high profile and exciting actual foreign policy activity.
Furthermore, the second source of Muslim immigration is the family based immigrant visa application system. Those immigrant visas are adjudicated overseas by Consular Officers. It is boring and undesirable work. Something that FSOs will be too willing to forego in favor of more interesting foreign affairs work. Processing an immigrant visa application takes time from the cocktail circuit and interestingly enough, FSOs reviewing visa applications are more strict on legal requirements than USCIS officers domestically adjudicating adjustment of status applications. FSOs are more than happy to deny immigrant and non-immigrant visas, which President Trump will agree with and encourage. Here Muslim immigration can be cut significantly, especially using the Public Charge exclusion provisions in immigration law to keep out intended welfare cheats.
Despite their inherent leftism, the Foreign Service bureaucrats don’t like the riff-raff who apply for refugee and visas. That sort of work is seen as beneath them. President Trump can use that bureaucratic prejudice to help end the immigration of Muslims either as refugees, visitors, or immigrants. President Trump will have an ally of convenience in the bureaucracy.There might be other battles with that particular bureaucracy over other issues, but there will be an area they agree upon, if not about Muslims, but about the icky foreigners scrounging for benefits. Those foreigners aren’t on the diplomatic cocktail circuit, so the blue-bloods don’ really care about that particular foreigners. So there will be a meeting of minds between one group of bureaucrats and President Trump.
Now, USCIS will scream like a stuck pig, as will the NGOs. All President Trump has to do is stand firm. In this area Executive authority is supreme. He can withdraw all overseas USCIS personnel mostly concerned with flooding the United States with refugees. Even the FDNS employees can be withdrawn, as they only duplicate the supposed work of the Department of Homeland Security attaches assigned overseas from ICE SVU (Homeland Security Investigations (HSI)) which is supposed to do visa fraud and other investigations overseas, themselves duplicating the work of the Diplomatic Security Service visa fraud investigators. Even better, closing USCIS offices overseas will save millions of dollars that can be better spent on domestic investigations into visa fraud and Muslim terrorists.
Donald J. Trump has an opportunity and allies in ending Muslim immigration. In future posts I will address other aspects of his fight to protect America and what he will need to do when sworn in as President to end Muslim immigation.
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