Foreign Affairs Agencies
While employees of the Department of State make up the largest portion of the Foreign Service, the Foreign Service Act of 1980 authorizes other U.S. government agencies to use the personnel system for positions that require service abroad. These include the Department of Commerce (Foreign Commercial Service), the Department of Agriculture (specifically the Foreign Agricultural Service, though the Secretary of Agriculture has also authorized the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service to use it as well), and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). USAID, Commerce, and Agriculture senior career FSOs can be appointed to ambassadorships, although the ranks of career ambassadors are in the vast majority of cases drawn from the Department of State, with a far smaller sub-set drawn from the ranks of USAID Mission Directors.
Read more about this topic: United States Foreign Service
Famous quotes containing the words foreign, affairs and/or agencies:
“Go to foreign countries and you will get to know the good things one possesses at home.”
—Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1749–1832)
“Men are the managers of the affairs of women
for that God has preferred in bounty
one of them over another, and for that
they have expended of their property.
Righteous women are therefore obedient,
guarding the secret for God’s guarding.
And those you fear may be rebellious
admonish; banish them to their couches,
and beat them.”
—Qur’An. Women 4:38, ed. Arthur J. Arberry (1955)
“While it is generally agreed that the visible expressions and agencies are necessary instruments, civilization seems to depend far more fundamentally upon the moral and intellectual qualities of human beings—upon the spirit that animates mankind.”
—Mary Ritter Beard (1876–1958)