In some places, the embassy hires locals because the locals know the local language while the USA citizens working there do not.

We hire locals for three main reasons, costs, continuity, and local knowledge.

It costs about 500,000 a year for every American overseas. This includes salary and benefits, plane tickets and shipping of goods, housing, the desk space and things like IT support, security, etc. It most countries, though not Western Europe, the salary of a local is cheaper, and while you still have to pay the costs associated with the desk, you don't have to pay housing. (though we do also hire family members of American who are already at posts for many of these jobs if they are qualified)

At an overseas post an American is there for three years max, where a local will often stay for many years.

They know the local language, the culture, and due to the continuity issue, often have the best contacts for getting things done.

While you may be interacting with locals in many cases, for most decisions including the final decision of issuing a visa or notarizing a document, etc it is American doing this.

That's the cost to ship VP of Fortune 500 company overseas, including the salary.

I have a feeling that GAO should take serious look at this costs.

Not so. A friend has had several long-term expat assignments as an engineer for General Electric. He told me the company spends just that figure, $500,000, per year per expat.

I was under impression that US Embassy would treat their citizens far better than Japanese Embassy, I guess wrong.

Friend of mine experienced a similar episode with Japanese Embassy in France. Her parents (Japanese citizen) traveled to Paris and father died of heart condition. In order to export(?) deceased body back to the homeland, some sort of government document is required, the document only the deceased or his/her spouse has the legal right to obtain from the government office in Japan. Well, deceased is deceased so there is no way the father can request such form. Spouse? now a widow also in Paris, France miles away from Japan, how the hell she is able to obtain such document when she is not in Japan? Knowing all these details, no one at Japanese Embassy helped to relay the message back to government office in Japan for expedited service, nor no one at Japanese Embassy helped the widow to coordinate exporting process. Poor mother had to wait couple days for her daughter/son to arrive Paris.

Felt really heartless and cold, but at the same time it confirmed the long lasting facts/rumors that one cannot expect any help from Japanese Embassy so don't bother.

Your comments just sparked my curiosity. What was your issue and how was it taken care of? Very interesting.

Pretty standard in the US too.

Both parents do not need be present if one parent has notarized permission from the other parent.

I don't understand what's especially complicated about a passport application? Of course you're going to swear the information you provided is correct by way of your signature. Where in the world would you not?

For what it's worth, when my father died outside of the country, the consulate was extremely helpful and fast and the lady went out of her way to make sure we didn't need any help with funeral arrangements or transportation of the remains (we did not).

Well in these days that seems unwise of the embassy - having a US passport doesn't preclude being up to no good!

Excellent post thegoodbubba, thanks for sharing.:)

'consumers' tend to underestimate costs and what costs exist

like net profit margins, they might be 0.1% after all the costs

For instance, who would think that adding 24 pages of paper to a passport could cost $82.

TIL that I was a VP of a Fortune 500 company. Too bad my pay didn't reflect that.

The costs do not only include the paper and the physical processing. They also include the design and implementation of a process for the processing, as well as the costs of hiring and retaining staff to manage both the processing and the management.

I'll just go to Khaosan Rd. next time pages need to be added...