Day 182 - A Tisket, A Tasket, Oops, I Lost It

Image of sign on a bus by Lodigs, via Flickr.com

The majority of non-routine passport cases involved reports of lost passports and requests for replacements. Some were true reports. Some were not. Of the latter, some were trivial. Some were not.

I relied on my gut reaction to the initial report of the loss to decide which cases to question further. Like so many of my German visa applicants, many Americans also were not good liars. The first clue was when answers to questions were vague or included too many "I don't remember" responses. When the person on the other side of the counter could give a credible and more or less complete description of the last time he was aware he still had the passport and a logical explanation for when it was lost, I didn't ask a lot of additional questions. If the person reporting the lost passport had already reported the loss to the police, I had even fewer questions. But when the answers were overwhelmingly "I don't remember," and no report of the loss was filed with the police, I kept asking questions, pointing out that my questions were to jog her memory to help find it.

One rash of reports of lost passports arrived from high school students in the early spring. It was like a minor epidemic at a school. Everyone seemed to have lost their passports and needed replacements. The first case probably seemed normal with the likely outcome that we issued a replacement passport. But by the third report, things started sounding fishy. As I asked additional questions, more and more "I don't remember" answers came up. It was clear the persons requesting replacement passports were trying to hide something. In one case, after I asked my questions and sent the young woman away with instructions that she should look a little harder before coming back to request a replacement, she left, but only for a short time. She returned to explain why she had asked for a new passport.

Her class, she explained, was taking a trip to East Germany and they were planning to travel by bus. But she was the daughter of a U.S. service member which meant she had a status of forces agreement, or SOFA, stamp in her passport. The status of forces agreement outlined the rights and responsibilities of U.S. service members and their family members while in Germany. One of the responsibilities was to limit travel between West Germany and West Berlin to three routes - one by air, one by train, and one by one highway. The young woman's class trip would not follow one of those routes. So she thought she would get a second passport without a SOFA stamp. Someone had told her all she needed to do was say she had lost hers and she could get a new one.

I was probably more bureaucratic than sympathetic in my response. I pointed out that those covered by the status of forces agreement had responsibilities as well as rights. The bottom line - I wouldn't issue a second passport to her.

Other reports of lost passports appeared to be less benign. Another group of lost passports was reported by former U.S. service members who were living in the Mannheim area. We suspected that passports were being sold. And there were still active underground terrorist groups in Europe, so the thought of U.S. passports in the hands of the Red Army Faction was unpleasant at best.

One man who reported his passport lost was most memorable for the contrast between all of his "I can't remembers" and the full details he could recall when I asked clarifying questions. For example, he couldn't remember where he last used his passport although it was within the past month. He traveled a lot for his job as a logistics specialist. Maybe it was when he traveled to France, or maybe it as to Switzerland.  I pointed out that the French government had only recently introduced the requirement that American citizens had to have visas to travel to France. My conversation with him went something like this:

"Have you ever applied for a French visa," I asked.

"No," he responded.

"Then I think it is unlikely that you last used your passport on a trip to France. Maybe it was when you traveled to Switzerland." I suggested.

"I didn't need to get a visa for France," he countered with just a bit of a challenge in his voice, "because I traveled by train. They issue visas to passengers on the train at the border."

It was amazing how well he remembered some details, but not others.

The interview window in the American Citizen Services section was within line of sight for the Marine on duty in the consular waiting room. While I was interviewing this man with two contrasting memories, the phone on the desk near me rang. The applicant had raised his voice so loudly that the Marine wanted to know if I needed help. I declined the offer and explained to the applicant, again, that in cases such as his, I advise looking harder for his lost passport before returning to apply for a replacement again.

He didn't return. But he did write a letter to the Consul complaining about my refusal to issue a replacement passport in which he exhibited his superior powers of observation as he described me, the color of my dress, and my matching shoes - shoes that he couldn't see while at the interview window. When my boss read the letter, she agreed that his letter just further undermined his credibility as the contrast between the details he chose to recall and those he couldn't was so dramatic.