EmbassVisit

Yesterday I had the pleasure of going to the embassy of the United States in Managua, Nicaragua. I had been strongly looking forward to this opportunity ever since the very beginning of out trip in Nicaragua. It was my chance to get an explanation from US officials of our interactions in their country.
Prior to going to the embassy, I along with the other members of my delegation brainstormed questions to ask regarding the issues we have covered throughout our trip so far. The topics included Immigration, the Contra/Sandinista revolution, US foreign AID, free trade zones/DR-CAFTA, and others. My questions to the foreign service agents focused on immigration in particular. Our group carefully sculpted questions so that they could not be confused by the foreign service agents, and included all of the things we were passionate about.
Upon arrival to the US embassy, I was blown away by the embassy building. It was by far one of the nicest looking buildings in Managua, and certainly the nicest building I have been inside while in Nicaragua. When we arrived, we gave all of our passport information to the guards and entered the facility.

After we were cleared to enter the facility, we were seated in a nice conference room. Representatives from Consular Services, Politics, Economics, and USAid eventually entered. They each gave a 10-15 minute presentation of what they do at the embassy and how they got to their position in Managua. After we were able to ask our questions to the appropriate agents. My questions on immigration focused on the US stance on visas, remittances, and undocumented persons residing in the US from Nicaragua. Unfortunately, the representatives did not fully answer each of my 2 questions and seemed to focus primarily on the good the US has done in Nicaragua instead of the policies and numbers I was asking about. And this seemed to be the trend for most of the meeting.
I think in the end, everyone was slightly disappointed about the amount of time we had to ask questions as well as the depth to the responses we received. Although this was unfortunate, I still got a new perspective on situations in NIcaragua from the US government perspective.