Bureau of Consular Affairs
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The Bureau of Consular Affairs is a bureau of the United States Department of State within that department's management office. The mission of the Bureau is to administer laws, formulate regulations and implement policies relating to the broad range of consular services and immigration. As of 2005, the bureau is headed by the Assistant Secretary of State for Consular Affairs, Maura Harty.
Passports
Issuance of U.S. Passports to American citizens is the responsibility of the Bureau. In fiscal year 2002, through sixteen U.S. passport agencies and two processing centers, 7.4 million U.S. passports were issued to American citizens planning to travel abroad.
Citizen support
The Consular Affairs Office of Overseas Citizens Services advises and supports U.S. citizens and U.S. embassies and consulates around the world in such matters as:
- Deaths
- Arrests
- Robberies
- Citizenship and nationality
- Federal benefits
- Notarization of documents
- International parental child abduction
- International adoptions
Visas and immigration
Following regulations established by Congress in the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), consular officers overseas, under the guidance of the Bureau's Office of Visa Services, are responsible for issuing all non-immigrant and immigrant visas. (Over 5.7 million non-immigrant visas and approximately 390,000 immigrant visas were issued in fiscal year 2002.)
The Bureau of Consular Affairs also administers the provisions of the INA as they relate to the Department of State in coordination with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement within the Department of Homeland Security.
External links
Only about 800 to 1000 Consular Officers are serving abroad at any time. About three quarters of them perform consular work only as a mandatory steppingstone to traditional and more prestigious Department of State duties such as economic and political reporting, cultural work, trade promotion, or administrative work.
All 19 of the 9/11 hijackers were issued visas by the U.S. Department of State, by Consular Officers who have on average only two or three minutes to interview each applicant for a visa. The Department of State has been criticized for chronically underfunding, understaffing, and sometimes neglecting the visa function. For some time efforts have been underway to transfer the visa function away from the Department of State to the Department of Homeland Security, which handles all aspects of immigration and naturalization except the visa function.
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