24 thoughts on “Thursday”

  1. Al Jazeera is being very weird with this talk of “conspiracy” in the Indian diplomat/nanny case.

    This article says that consular officials have a lower level of immunity, but strip-searching and arresting diplomats of any kind sets an awful precedent. The normal thing to do is to just boot diplomatic bad actors out of the country–that happens a lot.

    http://edition.cnn.com/2013/12/18/justice/indian-diplomat-immunity/

    If it were, say, the Russian government giving this treatment to a US consular official, we’d be in a tizzy.

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    1. My suspicion is that the reason Al Jazeera is being so weird about the Indian nanny case is that a lot of their readership has done some shady things with domestics.

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  2. I think the outrage is prompted by the strip search.

    My guess is that the arrest was handled by non-diplomatic (both in the colloquial and technical sense) employees who acted either technocratically (“she will get no special treatment”) or angrily (uppity woman) and that’s why the arrest was handled the way it was.

    On the other hand, I think the abuse of domestic workers by consular/diplomatic employees in the US has to be dealt with harshly, if any change is expected. The treatment considered acceptable by the origin countries (Asian & Middle-eastern come to mind) is unacceptable in the US, and, at the same time, a significant challenge for the consular employees, who are used to much more help than one gets in the US. The abuses will continue without clear signals.

    (unfortunately, I think the strip-searching undermined the ultimate goal)

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    1. (unfortunately, I think the strip-searching undermined the ultimate goal)

      That sort of thing and the “send out the fucking swat team for everything” certainly aren’t helping community relations.

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  3. Yes, Obama’s college ranking scheme will create perverse incentives. All ranking schemes do, but I particularly don’t like this one for what I think college should be.

    I think limiting student loans based on the ability to pay them back would be a better start — even if it impacts schools that serve the poor, mostly because I don’t think the schools are helping if the end result is a student with significant debt that they can’t discharge in bankruptcy.

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    1. “I think limiting student loans based on the ability to pay them back would be a better start — even if it impacts schools that serve the poor, mostly because I don’t think the schools are helping if the end result is a student with significant debt that they can’t discharge in bankruptcy.”

      Yes.

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  5. When I was doing immigration law work we had several cases related to the domestic staff of foreign diplomats. Some people were kept in near-slavery conditions. It’s a very common problem. As for the strip search, my understanding is that when someone is arrested on a felony charge (here, visa fraud) and booked into jail, they are almost always strip-searched. So, it was “normal” procedure. But, this seems like a case where “normal” procedure should not have been followed, given the potential problems. Whether it was merely mishandled or something more I can’t say. But, I’m perfectly happy to have the arrest made. (My understanding, again, is that there are different levels of diplomatic immunity, and only very top people get full immunity. Others are only protected in relation to actions connected with their official work. That didn’t apply here, which is why this woman could be arrested. I’m perfectly fine having that standard applied to US diplomats as well.)

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  6. “I’m perfectly fine having that standard applied to US diplomats as well.”

    I’m not. For example, India just recriminalized gay sex. I, personally, am not willing to have that law applied to Americans we send to serve in India (or, alternatively, to prevent gay Americans from serving in these positions “protected only in relation to actions connected with their official work.”).

    The understanding that we are *not* willing to have all the laws of other countries applied to American diplomatic employees is presumably the reason for complicated rules about diplomatic immunity. We certainly shouldn’t allow abuse of domestic workers in the United States, but, potentially, we might need to prevent the abuse by means other than felony prosecutions of consular employees by “normal” procedures that spiral into breaks in international relationships and tit-for-tat retaliation against Americans abroad.

    (Imagine this same case in which a consul employee is arrested and strip-searched in an Indian jail — it would be horrifying, especially if everyone was following “normal procedure” there).

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    1. One thing to note here is that the large majority of people who work at an embassy or consulate are not covered by diplomatic immunity _at all_. So, they are _already_ just subject to the normal laws of whatever society they are in. Full diplomatic immunity applies only to top-level officials. A lesser sort applies to senior officials for actions done in accordance with their jobs. That’s what applied here. Beyond that, there can be diplomatic pressure or special agreements, but I tend to think they do more harm than good. The best way for an American consul employee, in India or anywhere else, to avoid jail is to avoid breaking the law. I really don’t see that other special treatment is necessary or desirable, either for US citizens or for foreign citizens in the US. (Even full diplomatic immunity for top-level officials for crimes not related to their work in any ways seems undesirable to me. I think, in particular, of some top Russian embassy officials several years back who killed a woman while driving drunk- home from ice fishing, unsurprisingly enough- in Canada, and who walked away scot-free. I see very little good reason for that, and would see very little in a similar case w/ a U.S. diplomat.)

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      1. Back in the mid-90s, Georgia lifted the immunity of a diplomat who managed a spectacular bit of vehicular homicide in downtown DC. He served part of his sentence in the US and the balance back in Georgia. That’s the exception, of course.

        Abuse of domestic staff by diplomats in the US has been an issue for at least a decade and a half, probably even longer.

        But reciprocity is key, and helps us more in the end, especially in the more repressive parts of the world. Think of all the kinds of police harassment that is available to a government inclined to dish it out for political reasons; “avoid breaking the law” makes all kinds of assumptions about the qualities and desires of local governments and law enforcement.

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      2. Doug said:

        “But reciprocity is key, and helps us more in the end, especially in the more repressive parts of the world. Think of all the kinds of police harassment that is available to a government inclined to dish it out for political reasons; “avoid breaking the law” makes all kinds of assumptions about the qualities and desires of local governments and law enforcement.”

        Very, very true.

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      3. Also, let’s bear in mind that the CIA is under the auspices of the State Department, and any US embassy or consulate is going to contain a certain number of intelligence people and that their actual professional duties will almost certainly include stuff that is against the law of the host country.

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    2. My understanding is that there are a lot of gay US diplomats (it’s sort of the up-market version of being a flight attendant), so it’s not at all a theoretical issue–we have lots of US diplomats in India who could be in a VERY awkward position if India goes for tit-for-tat on this nanny thing.

      Also, we should actually be very good friends with the Indians, so this is a diplomatic own-goal.

      The traditional approach is to just boot out diplomats who misbehave.

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      1. I would not say “a lot,” although I would say “approaching their share in the general population.” And good for us that there are!

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  7. ” “avoid breaking the law” makes all kinds of assumptions about the qualities and desires of local governments and law enforcement.”

    yes, an even more important point than the possibility that some countries will have laws that we disagree with — some countries don’t have an established rule of law and are, instead, ruled by thugs who make their own rules for their own ends (in addition to all the gray areas in between).

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    1. an even more important point than the possibility that some countries will have laws that we disagree with

      Of course, we have laws (like, you can’t keep the domestic staff as slaves, even if you really, really, want to) that other countries don’t agree with, either. More generally, though, I’m surprised to see the sort of “American exceptionalism” on display here. It’s a bit depressing, really.

      some countries don’t have an established rule of law and are, instead, ruled by thugs who make their own rules for their own ends

      Indeed. Which is why it’s a good thing that foreign service officers, most of whom are not covered at all by diplomatic immunity right now are adults who can decide if they want jobs where they take such risks.

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      1. “More generally, though, I’m surprised to see the sort of “American exceptionalism” on display here. It’s a bit depressing, really.”

        It’s not “American exceptionalism” per se, but the awareness that countries genuinely vary in terms of their legal structure. “Innocent until proven guilty,” for instance, is a legal novelty outside a very small chunk of the globe. We also realize that being shaken down by crooked cops is something that happens with depressing regularity in certain parts of the world.

        I would feel fairly safe if I found myself in the hands of the Norwegian justice system (even if I were guilty as heck), but just ask Amanda Knox what she thinks of the Italian court system.

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      2. On what basis do you think that most FSOs are not covered at all? Because that’s neither my perception nor my experience, and a cursory reading of the Vienna Convention (all I have time for just now) does not suggest that either.

        Local nationals who are hired to work for a US diplomatic post make up a sizable share of the staff pretty much everywhere, and they are obviously subjects of local law, but nobody would be calling them Foreign Service officers anyway.

        In many postings, people who work directly for the Department of State make up about half or just under half of the US personnel there. The rest work for other parts of the US government. When I lived in Georgia, these folks also had diplomatic tags on their cars, service cards issued by the Georgian government, and so on and so forth. That suggests to me that basically all US personnel working at a diplomatic posting are considered “members of the mission” in the sense of the Convention (which is here http://www.unog.ch/80256EDD006B8954/%28httpAssets%29/7F83006DA90AAE7FC1256F260034B806/$file/Vienna%20Convention%20%281961%29%20-%20E.pdf ).

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  8. Amy, I doubt Louise Woodward thinks very highly of the US court system. As for being shaken down by cops – tell it to the women raped by cops during traffic stops.

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  9. It would be American exceptionalism to demand that our diplomatic employees be treated differently than their diplomatic employees. It isn’t exceptionalism to argue that because we are unwilling to ask Americans to serve under the laws of some regimes that we nevertheless want to have relationships with we will guarantee some privileges to employees of other nations diplomatic missions privileges that we don’t think are needed in the US.

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  10. In many postings, people who work directly for the Department of State make up about half or just under half of the US personnel there. The rest work for other parts of the US government. When I lived in Georgia, these folks also had diplomatic tags on their cars, service cards issued by the Georgian government, and so on and so forth. That suggests to me that basically all US personnel working at a diplomatic posting are considered “members of the mission” in the sense of the Convention

    Several things are blurred together here. The tags on the car go to _the car_ not the person driving it at such. The service cards don’t mean someone has immunity, either. As to the convention, how it’s understood by the US can be seen nicely in the chart at the bottom of this entry:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diplomatic_immunity

    The entry isn’t perfect, but this chart is mostly good. A large percentage, perhaps a majority, fall into the category who can be prosecuted for non-official acts (at least). That’s exactly what happened in the case in question, and is the standard we apply to our own foreign service officers, except when we have different, bi-lateral agreements. There was nothing exceptional in this case, and it was just an application of the standards that apply to our foreign service, too, and should.

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