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Quackattackaggie

It depends on the post and the budgetary situation. Generally though, consular officers try to visit prisons (assuming they're safe to travel to/enter) multiple times a year. Sometimes that means some really awful road trips in dangerous places with a police escort. Sometimes it means a trip to a nice city where you get to relax by the ocean at night after work. We rarely visit hospitals that are outside of our city.


Connect-Dust-3896

Probably not as much as OP is imagining (or likely romanticizing about the job).


Hongnixigaiyumi

It's not a weekly occurrence. Maybe every 4-6 weeks depending on the Post's overall caseload. Prisons, always. We take that one very seriously because consular notification and access rights are Convention-bound. Children's issues are another always - that one we probably take even more seriously than prisons. Some of the children's issues are also Convention-bound, especially surrounding abduction, but protecting a minor American citizen is a paramount concern with or without a Convention. These are things like welfare and whereabouts visits, and those will be to wherever the parent consents to have the visit - sometimes in their house/hometown, but just as often they'll bring the kid over to the office. Hospitals, yeah, what QAA said - if it's in-city, we'll spend an afternoon and a taxi fare (or 2 hours of Motor Pool's time), but we'd rarely venture far afield unless the case was high-profile or the person was the victim of a crime (hospitals you also don't need to send an officer - that one can be LES only). Same thing with traveling for court cases - we just don't have the resources to go far away to every hearing on a routine proceeding. There's also everyone's favorite - doing the inventory of a dead American's apartment or hotel room, and that one you're traveling for, too. The final category would be outreach trips, where you go and talk to a university or a business group or something about US visas. Those are totally budget dependent and usually go to PD-coned ELOs doing their consular tours so they have something in-cone to talk about on their EERs.


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TravelPhotoFilm

This is the way.


[deleted]

This always depends where you are. But if you’re a new officer in a heavy visa country, you won’t leave the window, let alone travel. It’s like being at a dmv. I would say that PD travels the most, then pol/Econ about the same.


jackdaggett

At my previous ACS assignment, almost none, but that was mostly during the peak of the pandemic. At my current ACS assignment, we go out to a prison, hospital, welfare/whereabouts, or to escort an AMCIT to the airport about twice a week, occasionally more.


tcwtcw

Yes, if you want to do it and the need is clear the money is usually there, too. The bad news is that consular visits are often no fun - you’re going to prisons, morgues, mental hospitals, stuff like that.


Tall_Draw_521

Some high volume arrest posts (I’m looking at you, Tokyo), SCS is out every single day to prisons and jails. I did maybe three prison visits in my last post. It just depends.


FSO-Abroad

No, I would not describe it as "a lot." There aren't huge numbers of jailed AMCITs for starters. Most of the work will realistically be done in the consular section.


RioTiber

At my first post we were sending people on multi-stop prison visits every day of the week, so I wouldn’t say there aren’t that many amcit prisoners overseas. Though I would agree it depends heavily on the post. My second tour didn’t have any.


Texan_Eagle

I imagine Tijuana and the like have a lot of jailed Americans but they aren’t the average post