Dip Passport!!

I had the distinct pleasure of holding my newly issued diplomatic passport (that's the one with the black cover) for about 1 minute today. Just long enough to sign it before handing it over with my visa application to go to Venezuela. Unfortunately, the "Venezuela Visa Specialist" is out of the office for a month, but the employee working there today did his best to help me figure out the application. One of the advantages of getting a diplomatic visa instead of a regular non-immigrant visa is that the interview and fingerprinting is waived. We're just learning about this in my class, so the timing is helpful for me to understand how these things work in the real world.

When diplomats from other countries apply for their visas to come work in their missions here in Washington or other cities in the US, they have fewer restrictions and requirements than the average Joe applying for almost any other kind of non-immigrant visa (tourist, business, student, exchange program, etc.). A lot of our standard operating procedures are based on reicprocity, so it follows that Venezuela gives the same consideration to diplomats going to work there. (I highly doubt, though, that we have such an iffy schedule for issuing to them as they do to us).

So, the Venezuela visas are on a "will call" timeframe, which sounds nice at first; it's rare that the office would call the applicant to advise that the visa has been issued--usually they'd tell you to check back in a certain amount of time. But further consideration of the practice led me to the realization that they can't give any kind of idea of how long we should wait before checking back, so the will call policy makes more sense for Venezuela.

I did make travel reservations for my flight, which will remain valid for 1 month, so I'm really hoping I get the visa back before then. Also, I'm leaving (if the visa comes) just over a month from today, so if I don't have it by then, I'll be trying to find out about a temporary duty assignment to keep me busy until it comes.

Today we learned about detecting fraud--in falsified documents such as passports and visas--and in people who apply with false identities. I'm not at all convinced of my ability to do either yet, so I'm glad I'll get a lot more help and training in that at post before being left to my own abilities.