Doesn’t Mexico have a consulate in Washington DC???
That’s the ONLY place where a Mexican Consulate should be...Our nation’s capitol...
A lot of countries put smaller consulates in other cities besides Washington. Years ago, I needed a visa to visit France, and I went to the French consulate in Manhattan to get it processed on the spot. If I had to send off to Washington to get it done, I probably would have been back from my trip before the darned thing was even looked at, let alone processed!
Embassies and ambassadors are in national capitals and consulates and consuls and consul generals (my late father was one) are in regional capitals.
Doesn’t Mexico have a consulate in Washington DC
It, like other counties has consulates scattered about the nation. This works both ways. Mexicans and Americans in need of official advice or help regarding the Mexican government don’t have to travel to DC to get it. The U.S. has 18 consulates in Mexico while Mexico has 50 in the U.S.
“Doesn’t Mexico have a consulate in Washington DC???”
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Every embassy has a consular section to provide services like visas, passports, and assistance to citizens abroad. As others have noted, many countries establish consular offices in large cities in countries where they already have an embassy. This is a convenience for both their citizens and those host country nationals needing to make official contact with that country.
Example: as a US Army officer in West Germany, I was the Battalion Personnel Officer (S-1) and the Re-enlistment NCO worked for me. He took an extended leave abroad as he was approaching retirement but failed to return on the appointed day of his leave papers. He had gone to Thailand with a potential business partner so we sent word through the US Consulate in Frankfurt to see if he could be found by consular officials in Cambodia. I went to Frankfurt to get briefings on the search status and they were the ones to contact me to let me know he’d been located. They made arrangements for his return to military control in West Germany.
Having a Mexican consulate in OKC is really not any different than that US Consulate in Frankfurt.
What all happens at a consulate? My mom and I went to the British Consulate in New Orleans in 1998 to sign the sympathy book for Princess Diana.
It was a bit misleading to call it the “British Consultate” though. One woman ran the entire office. So the same office was the Consulate for a dozen or more other countries.
This was before 9/11; anyone could come in off the street.
In general this is not the case for an embassy. The embassies are open to the general public for maybe a week or two during the summer.
Generally, Embassies are in capitols, and Consulates are distributed across the country, especially in geographically large countries like the USA. This makes perfect sense and minimizes travel to access consular services of that nation.