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State to Save Millions Closing Visa Offices Across Africa
Marco Rubio’s State Department will slash the number of U.S. offices in Africa processing visas for foreigners seeking to come to the United States. The almost 50 U.S. embassies and consulates that are currently processing visa applications will be reduced to 20 to take advantage of economies of scale. This will save taxpayer dollars maintaining offices and staff that mostly just refuse visas anyway, as well as likely slow the number of Africans who secure visas only to overstay in America. Donald Trump haters will call this racism. Supporters will call it saving taxpayer money.
The United States currently issues and refuses both immigrant and nonimmigrant visas at some 50 posts across Africa (out of 54 countries there.) Immigrant visas (IVs), also known as green cards, represent a relatively small amount of the business. The way immigrant visas are typically refused in Africa (officially called 221g) multiple times before finally being issued, sometimes years after the process started (as if your “Incomplete” in sophomore English Composition was still hanging over you years after graduation), the refusal rates appear artificially high and make for bad statistical comparisons. Also, the Donald Trump administration in January 2026 already suspended all immigrant visa processing for 26 African countries anyway, so these visas really are not of much concern here with this new development.
The nonimmigrant visas (NIVs) in Africa, mostly tourist visas, are overwhelmingly refused. To avoid complaints, the State Department closely holds actual refusal numbers per post. However, State is required to release refusal statistics by nationality, and that tells the tale. Some of the highest rates in Africa are Liberians 78.2 percent, Somalis 77 percent, Burundis 65.5 percent, and Beninese 61.5 percent, and Chadians 58.6 percent. And those numbers are pre-Trump II. In comparison, the historical refusal rates for most European countries were so low (below three percent) that the U.S. used that in part to give up even requiring visas from them years ago.
It is hard to say what the point of maintaining a visa office in a far-flung part of Africa is just to say “no” over and over again. State’s standard reply has to do with maintaining good relations with the host country (questionable on the face when there are so many refusals and immigrant visa processing is shut down completely). This also hints at an answer to why the U.S. has so many embassies and consulates in countries that arguably have little to do. Much of this network was established during the Cold War, when Washington viewed newly independent African states as key battlegrounds in its global competition with the Soviet Union. As African countries gained independence, both the United States and the USSR sought political influence, military access, and votes in international organizations. Establishing embassies also allowed the Americans to monitor Soviet activities and USAID contractors of varying sobriety and propriety. Although the Cold War ended in 1991, the diplomatic infrastructure remained in place as State resisted moves toward regional “hub” embassies brought about by the “peace dividend.” State currently still seeks to justify the mass of embassies, claiming they are there to counter the usurious Chinese Belt and Road Initiative without really explaining how they do that. Movie nights?
No need to worry, however, about the small percentage of Africans who might have succeeded in obtaining nonimmigrant visas in their home countries. Some 20 U.S. visas posts will remain open, and the applicants can apply there. The “closed” visa posts will still assist American Citizens and process special national interest visa cases and diplomatic applications. As for the rest, few African capitals have direct flights to the U.S. mainland anyway, so many travelers can apply enroute. Applicants must travel internationally to reach the United States anyway, so requiring some of them to travel to regional visa hubs is not an unreasonable burden. It’s an old system anyway; during my time processing visas in London, the embassy reserved a number of appointments for Iranian citizens, who would fly in on a weekly Swiss Air flight, get their visa, and head off to New York even as the U.S. maintained no diplomatic relations with Tehran.
There are two main reasons to shut down these African visa posts. Refusal rates are high enough to question maintaining separate processing facilities in every country. Maintaining an American diplomat overseas to process visas is expensive. He needs government housing, an office, a local staff, administrative support, security escorts, transportation, language training, education allowances for children, hardship and danger pay, and more (some of which albeit are fixed costs even if personnel headcount decreases), plus the actual sunk costs of his salary, benefits, and pension. There is no single official figure because costs vary widely by country, rank, and family size.
However, a report by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) found the State Department spent about $3.1 billion on pay, benefits, and allowances for roughly 9,000 U.S. direct-hire employees serving overseas in FY 2023. That works out to an average of about $344,000 per overseas employee per year. An earlier 2006 GAO study estimated the cost of placing a U.S. Foreign Service officer overseas at approximately $400,000 annually. None of this even tries to calculate the lost cost of having that expensively-trained diplomat spend his time saying no to visas in Monrovia when he could be working on much more critical issues in Beijing.
The other reason to shut down these visa issuing posts is because it will likely slow down the number of visas issued to African travelers and thus the number of visa overstays in the U.S. Because the U.S. does not comprehensively track overstays, there is no single, reliable headcount. However, the best source is the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Entry/Exit Overstay Report, which calculates overstay rates by nationality for visitors admitted as business or tourist travelers. It shows overstays for Africans ranged from a high of 49 percent for Chadians, to five percent for Ghana. Keep in mind this rate is not the percentage of a country’s citizens living illegally in the United States (no one knows that number because the census cannot by law ask about citizenship status). It is the percentage of a specific year’s visitor admissions that DHS could not confirm departed on time. Considering over 20,000 tourist visas are issued per year most every year just for Ghanaians, even five percent overstay by them represents a large and ever-growing number of actual people.
So what do we call the shutdown of visa posts in Africa? A good start.
Copyright © 2024. All rights reserved. The views expressed here are solely those of the author(s) in their private capacity.
Tough Times Ahead at Foggy Bottom?
If you had “State Department” on your DOGE bingo card as the next agency teed up, mark yourself a winner. But are tough times ahead for Foggy Bottom?
Secretary of State Marco Rubio on April 22 unveiled the beginnings of a reorganization of the State Department, calling the diplomatic agency “bloated, bureaucratic” and “beholden to radical political ideology.” But to some critics, it looks like a good start but has much further to go to create lasting progress in line with the Trump administration’s view of the changing U.S. role in the world. Among other things, the reorganization does not address any cuts to embassies and consulates abroad, the meat and potatoes of the State Department. One Foreign Service officer said the plan moved a lot of pieces around, but outside of the sleepy democracy and human rights division being gutted, most of the changes were not significant. “I wouldn’t call these sweeping reforms… yet,” the employee said.
The most drastic but still ho-hum change is the elimination of the Office of the Under Secretary for Civilian Security, Democracy, and Human Rights. Some elements of the office, including the Bureau for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor and one for refugees, would be folded into an office for foreign assistance and humanitarian aid, according to a reorganization chart posted on the State Department website. Rubio wrote the Bureau for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor became a “platform for left-wing activists to wage vendettas” against conservative leaders, including in Poland, Hungary, and Brazil, and to promote an arms embargo against Israel. Rubio also accused the Bureau for Population, Refugees, and Migration of sending millions of taxpayer dollars to non-government groups to promote mass migration, including “the invasion on our southern border.”
Rubio’s plan calls for reducing the total number of domestic State Department offices from 734 to 602, a drop of 17 percent, some 700 positions, though a detailed list has not been published. Rubio also instructed senior officials to reduce the number of U.S.-based employees overall by 15 percent in other individual domestic offices by July. Some once high-profile offices, such as the Iraq war-era Bureau of Conflict and Stabilization Operations, which aimed unsuccessfully to anticipate and prevent global conflict, will be closed. A new Bureau of Emerging Threats will be created focusing on cybersecurity and artificial intelligence.
Rubio said the State Department’s size and costs had “soared” over the past 15 years. So future unspecified plans are to combine overlapping offices and eliminate some programs not mandated by Congress. “Region-specific functions will be consolidated to increase functionality, redundant offices will be removed, and non-statutory programs that are misaligned with America’s core national interests will cease to exist,” said Rubio, though he did not give any specifics. In an email to staff, Deputy Secretary of State Chris Landau said implementation would be led by an internal working group that would come up with “thoughtful plans” aiming to adopt the changes by July 1.
Rubio’s plan is not much more than a good start. An earlier draft memo memo (called “fake news” by Rubio, likely written as a trial balloon by outgoing Pete Marocco, who left the State Department after having overseen the elimination of USAID) called for the Trump administration to cut some 48 percent of the State Department’s funding next fiscal year, mostly from its external programs. The draft proposed eliminating almost all funding for international organizations like the United Nations and NATO, ending the budget for international peacekeeping operations, and curtailing all of the department’s educational and cultural exchanges, like the Fulbright Program. It would also have cut funding for humanitarian assistance and global health programs by more than 50 percent. Many of those changes would have been drastic and unlikely to survive Congressional scrutiny; going forward, Rubio still needs to show his hand on low bang-for-the-buck international organization funding and post-WWII soft power programs. No more efforts to promote LGBT rights abroad, or right the world’s ills by pouring taxpayer money over them (though to be fair, Rubio did already cut State’s Office of Global Women’s Issues and its Diversity and Inclusion Office.) This reorganization should be a new day for diplomacy, but — so far — it is not.
There has been some deeper progress, and thus cause for optimism. Even before the budget memo described above reached the White House, the State Department placed all full-time staff from its “censorship office” on administrative leave as the agency moves to shut down the group altogether. Originally founded by Barack Obama and known formally then as the Counter Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference Hub, the office within the State Department’s Office of Public Diplomacy supposedly monitors, flags, and counters content deemed “foreign disinformation.” R/FIMI was created out of the ruins of the closure of its Obama predecessor in December 2024 following a series of First Amendment lawsuits discovered the Center was demanding from social media the censorship of American conservative voices. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg described instances when government officials would “scream” and “curse” at Meta employees, threatening repercussions if certain content wasn’t removed.
The Center was also used as a cut-out to fund The Global Disinformation Index, a British organization with two affiliated U.S. nonprofits, to feed blacklists to online ad companies with the intent of defunding and shutting down websites peddling “disinformation,” the Washington Examiner reported. This same “disinformation” group received $330,000 from two State Department-backed entities tied to the Center.
With its State Department funding (the first State Department-backed group supporting GDI was the National Endowment for Democracy) GDI identified the 10 “riskiest” news outlets for disinformation to include The American Conservative. You be the judge of the validity of that use of taxpayer money, and the direction United States diplomacy was headed.
There’s more to come at State (the layoffs planned for July 1 should be transitionary) and reason to call all this a good start — if Rubio follows through and if his domestic cuts are met with similar reshaping abroad.
Copyright © 2024. All rights reserved. The views expressed here are solely those of the author(s) in their private capacity.
Mercenary: Mr. Van Buren is rooting for an al-Qaeda takeover in Africa
Well, I’m not rooting for an al-Qaeda takeover in Africa, just to get that straight, though a “private military contractor,” a mercenary to the trade, or PMC to themselves in their fantasy world, thinks I am.
Our PMC friend wrote the following (below) on a private PMC site, in response to an article I posted on Fire Dog Lake, titled “Any More U.S. “Stabilization” and Africa Will Collapse.” An acquaintance from Iraq with ties into the PMC world was kind enough to forward the comments to me.
I think the comments speak for themselves, albeit with highlighting added, so let’s tuck into them:
What is there to say about Peter Van Buren here except that he appears to be out of his depth:
He makes many statements but provides no substantiation, e.g. Libya was democratized? When was that?
He writes “many were more focused on the underlying U.S. motives, isolating the rest of Sudan as part of the war on terror, and securing the oil reserves in the south for the U.S.” but offers no proof as usual. If one looks at http://www.eia.gov/countries/cab.cfm?fips=SU they will see NO US company getting oil from South Sudan. BS from Van Buren.
He offers empty words about US Special Forces in South Sudan and Santa Claus but nary a word of proof.
He cites numerous examples given by Nick Turse of the U.S. military in Africa, e.g. training some forces in countries around Somalia and logistical support for Amisom. SO?? SO WHAT IS WRONG WITH THAT?
Is Mr. Van Buren unaware of the al Qaeda link with al Shabob in Somalia? Is Mr. Van Buren asleep at the wheel?
Then he shows even more ignorance with his “the government of Niger fell to its military”?! NO IT DIDN’T. What is Van Buren talking about?
He incorrectly compares the US’s experience in Iraq and Afghanistan to that of nascent South Sudan.
Quite simply apples and oranges and way too soon to make any serious observations on South Sudan. Van Buren further shows his illogic by comparing what the US did re the “coup”in Egypt to President Obama’s words of warning of any government toppling in South Sudan.
Could you show us the double-down hypocrisy in the following words?? How is that warning about South Sudan a doubling-down of hypocrisy??
“Obama, apparently unwilling to remember how he stood aside while an elected government recently fell apart in Egypt, went on to double-down on hypocrisy by stating in regards to South Sudan, ‘Any effort to seize power through the use of military force will result in the end of long-standing support from the United States and the international community.’ ”
Van Buren writes, “Chaos has replaced stability in many places, and terrorists have found homes in countries they may have once never imagined.”?? More empty rhetoric from empty Van Buren. Could you cite some of those countries, Mr. Van Buren, or is that expecting too much scholarship from you?
Apparently, Mr. Van Buren is rooting for an al-Qaeda takeover in Africa as that is what the US is there to prevent. His fulminations remind me of “a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.” Shakespeare’s Macbeth
We’re always interested in the marketplace of ideas on this blog, so any PMCs who wish to offer an alternative viewpoint are welcome to either post comments or email them to the blog directly.
Copyright © 2024. All rights reserved. The views expressed here are solely those of the author(s) in their private capacity.
So How’d That Africa Thingee Work Out?
W-a-y back in October 2011 the U.S. invaded, albeit in a small way, the Central African Republic, because, well, big countries can still do stuff like that in Africa. Now, in December 2012, we’ve evacuated our diplomats and civilians because the invasion failed and chaos reigns in yet another place the U.S. muddled. Happy New Year!
Obama sent some 100 U.S. troops to central Africa to help battle a rebel group known as the Lord’s Resistance Army. American troops deployed to South Sudan, the Central African Republic and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The troops were combat-equipped to “fight only in self-defense,” a dubious statement given that as armed troops they are stomping around someone else’s country. That sort of calls for an armed response by the homeboys, and thus the need to self-defend, yes?
FYI, The Lord’s Resistance Army are a bunch of terrible thugs who have conducted a two-decade spree of murder, rape and kidnapping. They have not, however, attacked the U.S. They live really far away from America.
Anyway, like Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria and pretty everywhere else the U.S. has bumbled into, things are not working out in the Central African Republic. Another 50 U.S. troops have deployed to the African country of Chad to help evacuate U.S. citizens and embassy personnel from the neighboring Central African Republic’s capital of Bangui in the face of rebel advances toward the city. Obama informed congressional leaders of Thursday’s deployment in a letter Saturday citing a “deteriorating security situation” in the Central African Republic.
For those keeping score at home, this all tracks the growing US military presence throughout Africa (Admitted: Uganda, South Sudan, Mali, Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Botswana, Kenya, Burundi, Ethiopia and Djibouti, currently some 5,000 personnel), complete with complex special ops, US troops on the ground engaged in “training” and occasional combat, along with the sad, usual accidents involving prostitutes and naughty boys that follow our military worldwide, most recently in Mali.
Bonus: As part of our ongoing public service, Where’s Hillary?, we note that the elusive still-recovering SecState had no comment on the evacuation of her diplomats from the Central African Republic.
Extra New Year’s Bonus: While the primary US engagement in Africa continues to morph into a military one, China’s dominant relationships on the continent are economic.
Copyright © 2024. All rights reserved. The views expressed here are solely those of the author(s) in their private capacity.
America’s Shadow Wars on the Rise
Nick Turse’s changing face of empire series has been especially popular at TomDispatch. His most recent piece on how the U.S. military presence is spreading in Africa was publicly disputed by U.S. Africa Command, leading to a debate between AFRICOM and Turse about American actions. Now, his latest on proxy wars fills us in on where the American way of war is going: Washington Puts Its Money on Proxy War, The Election Year Outsourcing That No One Is Talking About.The U.S. fought a proxy war in Afghanistan in the 1980s, arming the mujahedeen against the Soviets and look where that got us: to 9/11 and into an Afghan War all our own. Nonetheless, tired of vast numbers of American combat boots on the Eurasian mainland, Washington has looked over history and decided to try again, writes TomDispatch Associate Editor Nick Turse in the latest piece in his “changing face of empire” series.
Proxy war, he tells us, is going to be a major component of the American way in the decades to come. While it may sound like a formula for success on the cheap, it is, he writes, a potential danger of the first order. “Right now, the U.S. is once again training, advising, and conducting joint exercises all over the world with proxy war on its mind and the concept of ‘unintended consequences’ nowhere in sight in Washington. Whether today’s proxies end up working for or against Washington’s interests or even become tomorrow’s enemies remains to be seen. But with so much training going on in so many destabilized regions, and so many proxy forces being armed in so many places, the chances of blowback grow greater by the day.”
From Afghanistan to Honduras, Asia to Africa, Turse explores the stunning myriad of training missions the U.S. military has undertaken, something most Americans know nothing about. He explores our present proxy war in Somalia and other potential proxy battles to come. He considers how Washington is planning to outsource fighting duties to local proxies around the world, and just how it’s laying the groundwork for the extensive use of surrogate forces in the future, training “native” troops to carry out missions — up to and including outright warfare.
Copyright © 2024. All rights reserved. The views expressed here are solely those of the author(s) in their private capacity.
US Militarization of Africa: 5000 Personnel, Ten Countries+
Here’s something genuinely different from TomDispatch.com.In response to Nick Turse’s July 12 piece, “Obama’s Scramble for Africa,” Colonel Tom Davis, the director of the U.S. Africa Command Office of Public Affairs, wrote in disputing a number of Turse’s points. Though TomDispatch does not normally post letters to the editor or have a comments section, this seemed interesting enough to make an exception. The debate is now up at the site.
The article makes for important reading as we learn of a growing US military presence throughout Africa (Admitted: Uganda, South Sudan, Mali, Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Botswana, Kenya, Burundi, Ethiopia and Djibouti, currently some 5,000 personnel), complete with complex special ops, US troops on the ground engaged in “training” and occasional combat, along with the sad, usual accidents involving prostitutes and naughty boys that follow our military worldwide, most recently in Mali.The back-and-forth between the Army and TomDispatch lays bare their two worldviews – Washington’s urge to garrison and control the planet militarily and a critical response that calls for a major downsizing of the U.S. mission in the world. There is a lot of information in this article on a topic covered lightly if at all by most other media sources.
Bonus: While the Army took the time to read, respond and intelligently challenge TomDispatch, the web site remains blocked and unavailable to State Department employees still, due to some mysterious “Wikileaks” connection never made clear. State Department employees cannot follow this important debate, by senior management decision. Sorry, enjoy your irrelevance. Breaking: State Department people who do wish to read the article can do so on a mirror site, Salon.
Bonus Bonus: While the primary US engagement in Africa continues to morph into a military one, China’s dominant relationships on the continent are economic.
Copyright © 2024. All rights reserved. The views expressed here are solely those of the author(s) in their private capacity.
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