Guatemalan Consulate opens in OKC

[Ross MacLochness]

Pretty neat stuff: Guatemala just opened a consulate in OKC, the first in the state.
http://newsok.com/multimedia/video/5476875020001

[Zuplar]

I'd love to know what they all thought when they were told they were moving to Oklahoma to open a consulate.

[BG918]

So this is different than the honorary consulates already in Oklahoma?

https://www.sos.ok.gov/protocol/consularCorps.aspx

[Ross MacLochness]

So this is different than the honorary consulates already in Oklahoma?

https://www.sos.ok.gov/protocol/consularCorps.aspx

according to the article, yes. They called the Guatemalan one Oklahoma's first full consulate. I don't know the difference.

[d-usa]

No idea how they handle the difference, but the difference between a consulate and the honorary consul for Germany is mostly about the level of services available, as well as hours of access. The honorary consul in OKC doesn't have hours posted, hasn't responded to a single email, and there are a lot of services he cannot provide such as fingerprinting required for many applications.

[OKCRT]

I'd love to know what they all thought when they were told they were moving to Oklahoma to open a consulate.

They prob thought the heat here is depressing.

[stlokc]

I don't know much about it but I feel like the difference between an "honorary counsel" and a consulate office is that one is more of a title and the other is a professional office.

I happen to know the honorary Austrian consul in St. Louis. He laughs and says it means he gets a certificate in the mail, a license plate and every once in a while gets to meet someone if they are traveling through. Otherwise he runs a software company. His main qualification is that his grandparents emigrated to the U.S. from Austria.

A professional office would have office hours, a staff, the ability to offer real services on an ongoing basis.

I'm surprised that Guatemala would have a consulate in OKC before Mexico. Aren't there a lot more Mexican nationals around than Guatemalan ones?

[d-usa]

Taking a quick look, it looks like Mexico has offices in Dallas, Little Rock, and Kansas City. So there are a lot of options for folks in this region of the US.

Quatemala just has Houston as the nearest embassy, then the next closest is Denver. There is very much no presence in the Midwest. So I think it's less about their population in OKC specifically and more about the population in the surrounding states and Oklahoma City's location on I-35, I-40, and I-44.

[Ross MacLochness]

I'm surprised that Guatemala would have a consulate in OKC before Mexico. Aren't there a lot more Mexican nationals around than Guatemalan ones?

Perhaps, but I'd bet the proportion of Guatemalans living in OKC with respect to all Guatemalan expats living in the USA is much higher than the proportion of Mexicans living on OKC compared to other places.