Congressman Ted Lieu (D-Calif.) Said in an interview that diplomatic discrimination and violence against members of Asian American communities are “different manifestations of the same issue: the inability of our government and some people to distinguish between a foreign government and Americans of Asian descent. It was this inability that led the American government to intern more than 120,000 Americans of Japanese descent ”during World War II, he said.
The process in question – known as “assignment restriction” – places limits on a diplomat’s security clearance based on concerns about “targets and harassment by foreign intelligence services, as well as to lessen foreign influence,” according to one State Department policy manual.
Links ranging from family connections to substantial financial interests or contacts abroad can be used to prevent a diplomat from serving in a particular country or working on archives related to that country. The issue has heated up amid growing competition between the big powers with China and the North Korean nuclear threat.
A former diplomat subject to restrictions was Congressman Andy Kim (DN.J.), a Boston-born Korean American who told MSNBC on Wednesday that although he had “top secret security clearance” and had served in Afghanistan, “One day I was informed by the State Department that I was prohibited from working on anything related to the Korean Peninsula.”
Kim said he was shocked because he never applied to work on any issue related to the Korean Peninsula. He labeled the decision a xenophobe and said that what hurt most was “this feeling that my country does not trust me”.
A statement signed by more than 100 Asian Americans working on national security and diplomacy, argued Thursday that the growing US focus on competition with China has exacerbated “discrimination and blatant charges of disloyalty simply because of our appearance” .
The signatories note that “treating all Asian Americans who work in national security with a broad stroke of suspicion, instead of seeing us as valuable contributors, is counterproductive to the larger mission of protecting the homeland.”
The upper echelons are aware of discrimination
Secretary of State Antony Blinken acknowledged at a hearing on the Foreign Affairs Committee of the House on March 10 that he had been aware of complaints of discrimination for several years: “It was a problem that arose when I last served”, as Deputy Secretary from 2015 to 2017, he told the Committee. Blinken added that he is “very concerned” about the problem and will address it as part of a broader reform that aims to increase diversity within the department.
Although the State Department is required by law to provide Congress with “the number and nature of restrictions and prohibitions on assignment in the previous three years,” a State Department spokesman was unable to say how many diplomats across the department are currently subject to restrictions.
The spokesman said the State Department “does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, nationality, disability or age when determining eligibility for access to classified information, including in all security clearance trials. The Department also does not make work assignment decisions based on protected characteristics. “
This commitment to equality and fair treatment is not felt by a large proportion of Asian American diplomats, however. In a 2020 AAFAA survey of members, 70 percent of the 132 respondents said they believed the department’s designation restriction process was biased.
Thirty percent of respondents in the AAFAA survey noted that they had assignment restrictions imposed on them, including 52 percent of employees with family ties to China, Hong Kong and Taiwan.
Three out of four AAFAA members with restrictions said they had not received a justification for the decisions that applied to them. Of those who received the reasons, almost half said they considered the decision to include factual errors.
The types of errors alleged by diplomats in the poll results seen by POLITICO included incorrect statements by close relatives who lived in China and restrictions imposed on parents born in China before the 1949 communist takeover – and who fled instead of living under communist rule rule.
The current approach “sends the false message that people who look like me are more disloyal,” said Lieu, who was born in Taipei, Taiwan, and is a naturalized American citizen. Lieu criticized Carol Perez, then head of the State Department’s Foreign Affairs Service and the global talent program, at a hearing on the Chamber’s Foreign Affairs Committee in September 2020, for not being able to detail the designation restriction procedures. the department.
Critics of designation restriction decisions note that there are many examples of Americans from minority groups – including Americans of Asian descent – serving in countries with which they share connections. The two most recent US ambassadors to Israel, David Friedman and Daniel Shapiro, are American Jews. Ambassador Sung Kim, who is Korean-American, served as ambassador to South Korea from 2011 to 2014. Kim is now acting deputy secretary for Asia-Pacific Affairs – the department’s main regional hand – and joined Blinken in your trip to Asia this week.
Lieu said the issue caught his attention for the first time during the preparation of a Congressional delegation’s trip to China and Japan in 2015. Members of Congress were briefed by about a dozen diplomats, but “none of them were Asian- American, “raising questions of justice and whether the United States is limiting its diplomatic capabilities, he said.
A broken appeals process
For years, there has been no process to challenge the allocation restrictions. Only in 2017, after Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-Texas) and then Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) Added language to the State Department’s Authorization Act to create a formal appeals process, and a system for contesting decisions came into force.
But Asian-American diplomats tell POLITICO that the current system remains deeply flawed. They say that security officials – rather than third-party arbitrators – are responsible for reviewing their own initial decisions and that there are no published figures on how many appeals are successful or unsuccessful.
“While we appreciate the department’s efforts to codify an appeals process,” wrote AAFAA President Shirlene Yee, in a note to the new government, “the appeals process is not independent of DS (Diplomatic Security)”, leaving “many disproportionately Asian employees of American descent, still caught in a cycle of fighting against perceptions of disloyalty. “
A bipartisan effort in Congress to strengthen appeal rights is underway.
The State Authorization Law of 2021 – which aims to revise the department’s operational guidelines for the first time in two decades and is supported by the leaders of both parties on the Chamber’s Foreign Relations Committee, Reps. Gregory Meeks (DN.Y.) and Michael McCaul (R-Texas) – would give diplomats the right to have an independent review appeal, heard and finalized within 60 days,
The Republican team on the House Foreign Affairs Committee told POLITICO that it sympathizes with Asian-American diplomats and wants the State Department to put its “most qualified personnel and the best Mandarin speakers” into tasks related to China. But Republican members remain hesitant about any changes that could open up new security risks.
Foreigners on your own
The heart of the matter is that Asian Americans continue to be viewed as foreigners by many Americans, including their colleagues, several diplomats told POLITICO.
“The United States is unique among nations because no matter who you are or where you come from, you can be an American. But very often, Asian Americans are left out as perpetually foreigners and discriminated against as not entirely American, including in the US State Department, ”Castro told POLITICO.
Yee shared the story of Yuki Kondo-Shah, who was informed just six weeks before leaving for a role in Japan that an attribution restriction would prevent her from posting. The department’s diplomatic security team cited her parents’ country of birth, volunteer work done in Japan after the Fukushima disaster in 2011, and family visits as evidence that she couldn’t work on Japan-related national security issues, a close American ally in East Asia.
Kondo-Shah successfully appealed the decision on his “foreign preference” for Japan, and is now an official at the US Consulate in Fukuoka, Japan.
Another diplomat, the son of Chinese immigrants, testified anonymously in a report by the Truman Center on State Department reform, that the security clearance process is structurally biased, penalizing first and second generation Americans.
The diplomat said they had to wait three years for their security certificate to start working in the department. “I reached out to more than 100 people – including current and former ambassadors, diplomatic security personnel and my representatives in Congress – to help accelerate my security clearance, to no avail. The Bureau of Diplomatic Security told me that only the President of the United States could accelerate my release. “
The diplomat added that, due to the lack of transparent data, “it is easy to dismiss the problem and consider stories like mine as isolated episodes. But they are not. “