U.S. Department of State

Hayley,

The issue with working in a country of which you are a citizen is that your host (home) country may refuse to issue you a diplomatic visa and you would not be covered by the privileges and immunities granted to diplomatic and consular personnel under the Vienna Convention.  You may need to renounce your citizenship in order to be able to be assigned to work there.

Thank you for the quick response!  What about a "more simple" position at a consulate,  not as a diplomatic or consular personnel.  Would the employer be the birth country or the US if I live in the US and am a naturalized US citizen? Is this even possible? I just think it would be fun to help people out, being familiar with many cultures.

If you are thinking of working as a Locally Engaged staff, you must be eligible to work in that country.  You should investigate job opportunities at the U.S. embassy or consulate in your country by going to their website.  In this case, your employer would be the U.S. government.  You could also consider job opportunities at the embassy of your birth country here in the U.S.

For general information on locally-employed opportunities, please click here:

http://careers.state.gov/local-employment

Individual US embassies and US consulates administer their own local hiring programs. If you are interested in working at a specific U.S. embassy or U.S. consulate, please check the embassy or consulate website to see if there are any temporary or locally employed (LE) staff vacancies you would qualify to fill.  Individuals interested in becoming LE Staff must be legally eligible to work in the country of hire in order to apply. This usually means already having a work permit, residency permit, or other documentation required under local labor law.

To access U.S. embassy and U.S. consulate websites, please click here:

http://usembassy.state.gov/  Information on employment opportunities and how to apply is found at the websites.