George Farag

Former U.S. Diplomat · Author · Founder

I was an Arab immigrant on welfare who became a U.S. diplomat after 9/11.I’ve spent the years since working across diplomacy, immigration, and war, serving my country in difficult places and sometimes helping Americans get home.

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Arriving.

A boy with glasses, his younger brother and their mother at the rail of a boat in New York Harbor, the Twin Towers behind them — **New York Harbor, 1980s.** Me, center, with my mother and younger brother.

Jersey City, 1986

I arrived in Jersey City on Halloween night in 1986 with my mom and younger brother. We had almost nothing.

Mom babysat for cash in the mornings and worked a cash register at night. We furnished our apartment with things other people left on the street. It still wasn’t enough, so we went on welfare.

I stood in food-bank lines for cheese and powdered milk. I learned that food stamps didn’t buy toothpaste. Those programs kept food on our table and a roof over our heads.

In eighth grade, a teacher at my public school suggested I apply to a magnet high school. A teacher had noticed a poor immigrant kid and opened a door.

More doors followed. A state scholarship sent me to college. A public-service fellowship led me to graduate school.

That was my America. It wasn’t perfect, but it gave us a chance and only asked that we build a future in return.

Then came September 11, 2001.

September 11, 2001

I watched the Twin Towers burn across the Hudson.

For me, the attack was on the country that had fed my family when we were hungry and educated me when we were broke.

Three weeks later, I sat for the U.S. Foreign Service examination. It was the beginning of a journey that would take me back to the Middle East, but this time representing America.

I needed to serve the country that gave me and my family a future.

Serving.

Iraq

Najaf

I was one of the first American diplomats to serve in Iraq while Saddam Hussein remained at large.

After losing eight colleagues and friends to insurgent ambushes, I pulled a fellow American diplomat out of a mob attack tied to a militia leader in the insurgency.

George Farag in conversation with an Iraqi man outside a tiled shrine, another man watching from the doorway

An evacuee hugs a child wearing a flight helmet beside a U.S. Navy helicopter, the sea behind them

Lebanon

Beirut

15,000

Americans evacuated from Lebanon

At the U.S. Embassy in Beirut, I helped coordinate the evacuation of more than 15,000 Americans. It remains one of the largest evacuations of American civilians since World War II.

While most officers were also ordered to evacuate, I remained in Beirut as the only Arabic-speaking consul, supporting the Ambassador as he negotiated U.N. Security Council Resolution 1701 to end the war.

After the Foreign Service

Crisis Management

Today, my firm supports consular crisis operations across U.S. diplomatic missions affected by conflict in the Middle East. We help adapt visa services, coordinate teams and local partners, and maintain essential operations as security conditions change, helping embassies continue serving people through closures, evacuations, and phased resumptions of service.

Map titled Where I’ve Worked showing cities across the Middle East, with an inset of New York City and Washington, D.C.

Belonging.

Select Writing & Press

Published work

My mother was no less American behind a cash register than I was carrying a diplomatic passport.

Both sides of the window

I know immigration from both sides of the consular window: as an immigrant whose family lived its uncertainty, and as a consular officer who decided who could, and could not, come to America.

My writing brings both perspectives to immigration policy and its human consequences.

Selected writing

The U.S. Urged Americans to Evacuate the Middle East. Their Families Can’t.

When the State Department told Americans to leave the region, many could not bring the parents, spouses and children waiting on U.S. visas. I argue for humanitarian exceptions.

Read at Washington Post

Threats to Gulf water infrastructure could spark a regional mobility crisis

Gulf desalination plants are a single point of failure. I look at what their loss would mean for remittance-dependent economies in Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan and Sudan.

Read at FT.com

Jersey City Times

We Immigrants Belong

Proposals to bar naturalized citizens from certain offices would make birthplace a lifetime disqualification. I was trusted to represent America in war zones abroad; under that vision, I would not be trusted to represent Americans at home. Citizenship cannot mean equality for some and a lifetime of proving loyalty for others.

Read at Jersey City Times

More writing

Profiles

Profile · by Brittany Bernstein