To break out of our routine of having classes in the morning then a site visit in the afternoon, today we visited the US Consulate then went to classes afterwards (big change, I know). Visiting the US Consulate was very interesting and being able to talk to people who have not lived in Vietnam for very long and who have an outside perspective of the country was very beneficial.

Walking into the Consulate, I had no idea what a consulate even was, so I was happy when they laid it all out or us in the beginning. Basically, a consulate is a branch office of the embassy and they have similar duties. Typically, embassies are in the capital of a country while consulates are in other major cities of the country. In both offices, the US workers stationed there are in charge of granting or denying citizens a visa to get into the United States. Applying for a visa as a Vietnamese seemed like an easy thing by the way they described it but actually being granted the visa is a different story. According to who we met with, a US Consulate worker must interview each visa applicant and apparently, they walk into the interview assuming that the Vietnamese citizen should not be granted the visa. The Vietnamese citizen, therefore, must prove that they deserve the visa by giving evidence of reasons why they want to come back to Vietnam. With so many people applying for visas into the United States, the US Consulate workers said that the process of obtaining a visa may take anywhere from one year to 10 years, all depending on how long the wait list is.

Not only is the consulate important for approving visas, but it also provides the Vietnamese with crucial resources and information that they would not have otherwise. When walking in, we were able to see the library that the Consulate provides for the Vietnamese and on an entire wall were college flags with US college information. Finding this critical information about US college applications would be incredibly difficult for the Vietnamese if the Consulate were not there. Furthermore, the US Consulate also hosts presentations and talks about vital issues occurring in Vietnam and around the world, such as global warming. By providing these critical resources to the Vietnamese, the US Consulate is aiding the Vietnamese development and is fostering a beneficial partnership between the two countries that will ultimately pay off in the future.