Posted on 08/02/2013 9:51:17 AM PDT by South40
That’s not quite as comforting as it should be...
Opps ... yep ... yer right.
And most of the lower level employees don't. They have a regular blue passport, just like yours.
Au contraire. You are wrong. I am a retired FSO with 28 years of service--most of it spent abroad. All employees (with rare exceptions) assigned abroad by the State Department are given diplomatic passports including their dependents. This includes secretaries, communicators, etc. They may not be given diplomatic titles, which would place them on the diplomatic list, but they do have diplomatic immunity.
It used to be that a dependent spouse of another nationality had to become an American citizen before being assigned abroad. The reason was to provide them a diplomatic umbrella to protect them while stationed in a foreign country. This has changed and the foreign spouse is warned that the USG is limited in the kinds of actions it can take to protect their interests abroad.
Some other agencies may handle who gets a diplomatic passport differently. But no one assigned permanently to a diplomatic mission abroad is given anything less than an official passport.
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