AI Use Cases for Consular Affairs

AI Use Cases for Consular Affairs explores applications for artificial intelligence (AI) across issues such as visas, passports, border security, disaster evacuation, and identity verification. It shows how AI can improve fairness, expand access, and return precious time to public servants, while confronting the risks and ethical dilemmas head-on. Drawing on more than sixty years of combined diplomatic experience-including the adjudication of tens of thousands of visas and leadership through crises, evacuations, and fraud investigations-retired U.S. Foreign Service Officers Dr. Don Kilburg and Virginia Blaser reveal how AI is reshaping global mobility-from biometric identity verification and fraud detection to crisis alerts, multilingual access, and workflow optimization. Every year, millions of people apply for visas, renew passports, flee disasters, or struggle to prove their identity across national lines. Behind each of these moments lies a hidden world of high-stakes consular decisions-made under immense pressure, with limited time and imperfect information. AI has the power to transform that world. This book is essential reading for public servants, policymakers, diplomats, state officials, and anyone working in consular affairs. But its lessons reach much further, to any institution now turning to AI. Used well, AI scales not by replacing human judgment but by protecting it. In the end, what earns AI a place in the systems we rely on is not raw power. It is fairness, accountability, and trust. AI deployment in consular affairs offers that guide on a global scale.