EFM: Escalating Friction with Mexico

Does not a week go by in which the American-Mexican border situation worsen?

Last week, I mentioned that I've taken more interest in world affairs as a result of coming acquainted with the foreign service and its diplomats. Naturally, my interest in Mexico is more intense, and there is no shortage of news on that front.

In the latest incident, a U.S. border patrol agent shot a Mexican teen. Any guesses as to where on the border this took place? If you took the safe guess, Juarez (can't pronounce Juarez without "War"), you'd be right.

Closer to our future, temporary home, Arizona is pissing Mexico off (as well as East Coast Democrats) with the law about needing to carry documents proving your American citizenship, which only can lead to the harassment of the Latino population - illegal or otherwise. By the way, you have to love the way the Arizona legislature dressed this one up, as it is officially called the "Support Our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhoods Act."

Now I'm not going to pretend to have the answers. In all honesty, I get the arguments the Arizonans are making. There is a border problem, and that state is on the front line. It is easy for Americans far from the border to point at the state and its leaders and call them racists. Though in a bizarre twist, about a dozen states not along the border are introducing similar legislation. (Really Ohio? What, are you trying to keep the Canadians out? Or is this about keeping Kentuckians out? Despite what you might think, Kentucky is part of the Union, and we will continue to cross the river.)

My own opinions are that current situation is like the healthcare bill. I know something has to be done because the current situation can't continue this way, but I also think the passed solutions not only won't improve the situation, but in all likelihood, it will only serve to make things worse.

And with regards to American-Mexican relations, I have a profound interest in how this develops. As tensions between the U.S. Southwest and northern Mexico continue to spiral out of control, and seemingly become more strained every day, spending a couple of years there is not incredibly enticing.

But then there is this article claiming that the four safest cities in the United States are San Diego, El Paso, Phoenix and Austin. Apparently, our recession has made us less desirable to potential illegal immigrants, or so a U.S. Border Patrol spokesman said.

Of course, the Border Patrol has a vested interest in showing it is doing its job. Just as the legislators have a vested interest in claiming a crisis to get more federal funds and pass racist laws under the guise of protecting the local populace.

That article concludes with this quote from Edward Alden, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.

"Border security has become the most overused, and least understood, concept in the struggle over what to do about our broken immigration system," he said. "While an election year may not be the best time, the United States finally needs an honest debate over what it means to secure the country's borders."

I certainly can agree with this, and I'm about to get an up-close look at the border as well as what it is like for those on the other side of it. Maybe in two years, I'll have the answer, which might be necessary because I'm fairly certain our government won't.

One Thing I Know (and a few thoughts)

Hand me a stone tablet; I have some information ready to be etched down.

On second thought, I've never used a chisel. The Internet will have to do.

We scheduled our pack-out day, and now I can lay claim to real knowledge as opposed to fool's knowledge. I know what day the movers are coming for our things.

Which, of course, could cause a problem. Because while we know when the contractors will bring the boxes, we don't know if Natalie will pass her Spanish exam on the first go around. We have a pretty good idea, but what we don't know.

It kind of makes me wonder who is writing the policies and guidelines of being a foreign service officer. I hope it is not the same people who are writing the policies and guidelines of foreign diplomacy.

By now, the world knows my disdain for the acronyms used during the moving process (I'm looking at you, UAB and HHE). Well, here is yet another aspect of moving that doesn't make any sense. Why do we need to schedule a pack-out day before we know when we are leaving (OK, we have a date, but it also is dependent on passing Spanish)? How does this make any sense?

I suppose "putting the cart before the horse" isn't considered a warning to proceed in logical order; rather, it is considered an instruction manual.

Anyway, I'm glad to have knocked out one practice run (at a friend's expense), so hopefully our turn will go smoothly...I think I just heard the collective foreign service community chuckle.

We do have the advantage of filling a car with the really, really important things, and we are in the process of adding a roof-top cargo container and rack on our compact sedan to compensate for the loss of our backseat for transporting Tiffy.

House Keeping Note:
When I first started this blog, I spent some time looking for other blogs to follow, and then added a few as they found me. In other words, I got lazy and content. While not necessarily one of my aims when I got started, I learned quickly that the foreign service has an extensive blogosphere, and it is a great way to learn from others and make contacts.

So I've added a lot of blogs to my follow list, and I figure that will continue to grow over the next few days. I'm mostly only adding and following other Entertaining, Functioning Manuscriptists (EFM-written blogs that get updated with some regularity...maybe an acronym was a bad idea there).

A special thanks to Life After Jerusalem for keeping such an extensive and well-organized list of bloggers. She provides a great tool for following other bloggers.

Downsides of a Shrinking World

FRASER, Col. - Less than a year ago, I thought Guatemala was an island country. I thought Lahore was in India. I had a rough idea of Haiti's whereabouts, though I didn't know it shared a land border with the D.R. I couldn't name a city in Chile.

Now I know Americans who are or who will be posted at these places where natural disasters and civil unrest have wreaked havoc.

I'm somewhat embarrassed to say that in the past, when something like an earthquake would wipe out the capital of an island nation or if a sinkhole swallowed an entire city block in an impoverished country, I would have looked at the photos and videos in brief amazement, and then proceeded to check out how my fantasy baseball team was doing without sparing any additional time dwelling on the catastrophe.

Now I look for articles and reports about what ground zero is like, to see if there is any news about any deaths or injuries to Americans and for a statement from the State Department.

Ignorance was bliss. Not knowing where these places were - let alone someone living there - made it easy to look away. I'm sure that natural and man-made disasters have always been occurring at a similar frequency as now, but now that I'm paying more attention, it seems like hardly a week passes without learning of something else terrible happening somewhere else in a place where I just learned of someone I know arriving for post. (You might have to read that sentence a couple of times, but trust me, it makes sense.)

Consequently, my fantasy baseball team is getting a little tender, love and care, but I'm slowly becoming more of a world citizen instead of mid-Atlantic American. The exposure to fascinating world cultures, cuisine and customs is a huge benefit, but becoming more aware of the world's hardships is more sobering everyday.

Fool's Knowledge

With regards to the foreign service, as soon as I think I know something, I realize I'm way off base.

After making it onto the registrar (good job, honey!), initially we thought we'd be called off almost immediately because we heard rumors that due to the increased number of foreign service positions the Obama Administration was creating, there was virtually no waiting list.

Obviously this was not the case. So just as Natalie was deciding whether or not she wanted to try to improve her positioning by taking the oral exam again, we did get the call.

Then I started to share with friends and family all sorts of bad information about where we could wind up (I thought only embassies were in play. There are like 30 potential locations in Mexico, and only one has an embassy.) and how long until we got there.

Even as recently as this week, now that we've been on the inside for about nine months, I'm still learning that once I'm ready to claim I know something, we are wrong. The most recent example was that we were told by somebody who probably ought to know better that everyone being posted in Mexico who wants to take a car with them has to drive there.

That made a little bit of sense, because it seems it is cheaper for the government to pay for gas and hotel rooms than to pay to ship the car. But it stopped making sense about the time you realized that Merida, Mexico, is all the way at the bottom of the country and would be a very long drive. Yet if you get posted right across the border in Guatamala or Belize, then the government will pay to ship your car.

Of course, by now, I've come to accept that very little of what the government does makes sense, so I just accepted that this was another one of those examples that the government's procedures were flawed.

Turns out that there are only about a handful of border cities that the government won't ship a car to, and that Hermosillo isn't one of them. We're still going to drive there, but we were both surprised by this revalation.

It has made me re-assess what I know. What I know is this. The sun rises in the east and sets in the west. Hermosillo is in Mexico. Mexico borders the United States. We are suppose to live there.

There's also things I ought to know. But having been proven wrong about things I know on almost a daily basis since this process has begun, I don't like to share this information anymore. The biggie here is about when we are leaving. I think I know when we are supposed to move, but because it is dependent on Natalie passing her Spanish exam, and because this date changes more often than D.C. weather, I'm content to say I don't know.

And finally, there are the things I believe to be true, but these beliefs are based more on speculation than anything else.

The lesson is to take information at face value. Even if the information is coming from a reliable source, it could still be inaccurate. About the only thing you can bank on is that isn't a fact until it has already happened.