Friday, June 21, 2024

U.S. Consular Officer In El Salvador Not a Big Fan of Tattoos


So there is a limit to a U.S. citizen's rights, and the Supreme Court just found it. 

Please be advised that there is no right to bring foreign national spouses into the country, and no, the USG does not need to go into a lot of detail about it when they cite concerns about the criminality of said spouse. 

The adjudication of Department of State v. Muñoz turned on the matter of tattoos, specifically, those tats on the Salvadoran husband of the respondent, an LA civil rights lawyer. 

The tattoos actually sound pretty modest from the details given in the opinion, but still, our consular staff in Salvador must be experts on tat interpretation, and I will back their judgement as to the undesirability of admitting someone with those inkings into the USA.

6 comments:

James said...

I wish I was smart so I could be a diplomat.

TSB said...

Don't give up hope. I'll say this for the Foreign Service: they use a serious test - like the old SAT - to assess an applicant's general knowledge, and there are NO pre-qualifications for generalist positions other than age, U.S. citizenship, and worldwide availability. You don't even need a college degree or a foreign language proficiency. You could be a high school dropout and still get hired if you score high enough on the test and other assessments.

Now, in these PC times, that test has been watered down, but still hiring in the Foreign Service is much more straight meritocrat than with other federal agencies.

James said...

A long long time ago, the people I worked for hired mostly people out of the humanities, they felt these people were more rounded.

James said...

I guess I'm a little too cynical, the rank and file of any big outfit are generally pretty good, it's the higher ups ( political generals) that don't cut the mustard with me.

TSB said...

Worker bees vs political appointees, yes, that's the dividing line.

On the usefulness of the humanities, there is something to that. If all you know is how to learn, as a History professor put it to me, you can indeed be productive in a lot of jobs.

James said...

The humanities thing was pretty smart.