Digging Into Diplomacy
What I discovered about my home country while interning for the U.S. Embassy in Ukraine.

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This article was published in Abroad View's fall 2009 magazine.

The Ukrainian and European Union flags adorn the Ukrainian Ministry of Foreign Affairs building. While Ukraine is not currently a member of the E.U., its president has made Western integration and eventual membership in the organization one of the country’s top goals.

By Yuliya Zeynalova

As I stood behind a bulletproof glass window at the American Embassy in Kyiv, Ukraine, and observed a consular officer carry out a routine visa interview, one thought rushed through my mind: “I don’t belong here.” At that moment I imagined myself on the other side of the same window, the two-inch thick barrier separating the life I now have from the one I almost had. Of course, this easily could have been the case were it not for the twist of fate that brought my family from this very country to the United States exactly 14 years earlier.

Having just completed my political science degree at the University of California, Los Angeles, I traveled to Ukraine to gather information for my graduate thesis and to complete a summer internship at the American Embassy in Kyiv. Leaving my comfortable college life, I was enthusiastic about experiencing the world of diplomacy and eager to visit my homeland for the first time since emigrating in 1994. Unknowingly, I embarked on an experience that would spark my interest in international law as I witnessed the deeply seeded societal problems that promote illegal international emigration from Ukraine and dozens of countries like it.

On my first day at work, I uncomfortably observed a 65-year-old man from Ukraine’s economically depressed western region as he was denied the tourist visa he needed in order to visit his daughter in America. This scene should not have provoked much surprise. After all, just like an estimated 40 percent of all Ukrainian non-immigrant visa applicants, this man’s demographic and social qualifications did not make him eligible for a temporary visa. His salary was below the poverty line; he had no prior international travel and no substantial family ties keeping him in Ukraine. Simply put, he had nothing to lose from overstaying his visa and permanently remaining in the United States. This fact alone labeled him a potential illegal immigrant even before he set one foot in the U.S. Embassy.

After only half of my family (my father’s Jewish side) was granted political refugee status for having suffered religious persecution by the Soviet government, my mother’s own sister and nephew were among those who had applied for and were denied tourist visas to visit us in the United States. While I became aware of the commonality of visa fraud in this region during my first briefing at the Embassy’s Consular Section, I could not help but see a bit of irony in it all. For one, there was nothing that made me better or more worthy of leaving the poverty of Ukraine than my cousin. Second, I felt the slightest bit of shame for being on this side of the window and powerless to help my own relatives attain the quality of life that I have been given simply by virtue of living in the United States. Over time, I realized that the problem would not be solved by getting my relatives out of Ukraine, but instead by working to better the internal conditions that motivated many, like us, to flee in the first place.

During the next three months of my internship, frequent collisions between my personal immigrant background and my professional experience fueled my growing interest in the issues of U.S. immigration policy and the laws that govern it. For instance, when the Political Section’s senior human rights officer assigned me to work on translating and summarizing documents pertaining to a particularly gruesome case of human trafficking, I was able to apply my familiarity with the conditions in Ukraine to gain a deeper understanding of the issues that may have motivated the victim to willfully enter the smuggler’s trap. My acquaintance with dozens of young, beautiful, and highly educated Ukrainian women—who could easily wind up in this same situation because of their inability to support their families on the average monthly Ukrainian salary of $165—enabled me to look deeper within this case and to ask prodding questions about its origin. The answers pointed to one culprit: the inadequacy of the country’s legal institutions, which simultaneously contribute to its impoverishment, its citizens’ growing desire to flee, and the growth of organized crime rings engaging in human trafficking within its borders.

Were I simply another diplomat without personal ties to this country, I could hardly see myself obtaining the same depth of perspective on this issue. After all, U.S. Embassy employees enjoy a highly slanted view of life in Ukraine. Living in our luxury apartments and earning American salaries, none of us could easily comprehend having to pay exorbitant bribes for everything from adequate medical care to university admission. It was only by traveling a mere 45 minutes from the prosperous Kyiv city center to the dilapidated, communist-style housing projects where my relatives live that I caught a glimpse of the vast economic inequalities, driven by the political and social mechanisms operating in post-Soviet Ukraine.
Traveling in the local style, a rusted 1970s shared taxi van known as a marshrutka, I encountered Kyivans at their daily commutes across the Dnieper River Bridge that separates prosperity and reality. Most seemed happy to head home at the end of the long, hot work day, but I felt uneasy as their distrustful stares reminded me that I was an outsider. It was during one of these weekly excursions that a local policeman approached and questioned me when he recognized my Western-style clothing and saw an opportunity for a shakedown. Flashing my diplomatic identification card, I was saved. Without it I would have surely had to pay up. Upon regaining my composure and quelling the feeling of outrage that swelled like a wave of heat across my body, I came to a realization that the experience was worth it. Combating economic inequality really starts at its legal source. And being one of the lucky few who have escaped such lawlessness makes it my personal duty to do just that.

While doing research for my undergraduate thesis on Russia’s foreign policy in the former U.S.S.R., I had learned of the political and economic turmoil that unraveled in Ukraine after the so-called “democratic” Orange Revolution of 2004. Yet it was only during my return to Ukraine that I witnessed the effects of the country’s weak constitution, jurisprudential system, and new government. During my internship, I was shocked to discover a significant number of Verkhovna Rada, or Ukrainian Parliament, deputies involved in lucrative and legally questionable businesses even while holding their political posts. Although this is technically illegal in Ukraine, the country’s legal system allows for numerous loopholes, such as registering the business in a relative’s name. Sadly, many Ukrainians consider this the norm, see no prospects for change, and instead attempt to flee the country illegally.

This reality has convinced me the only way to tackle such migration patterns is at their underlying legal foundation. After returning to the United States from my summer in Ukraine, I have contemplated pursuing a career in law, which I hope would allow me to take an effective and personally fulfilling role in shaping and implementing America’s international policy in the post-Soviet region. While my internship experience showed me the life of a State Department diplomat may not be for me, it also exposed me to Ukraine as it exists today and dashed the distorted view that I had formed of my homeland from youthful memories and my parents’ nostalgic stories.

Yuliya Zeynalova graduated with honors from the University of California, Los Angeles in 2008 with a B.A. in political science and Russian studies. During the summer of 2008, she worked for the U.S. Embassy in Ukraine through the U.S. Department of State’s Student Internship Program. Yuliya is currently a fellow in the California State Senate and is simultaneously earning a master’s degree in public policy from the California State University, Sacramento. She will begin her legal education this fall at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law.