Croatians want to travel to Salt Lake City for a variety of reasons: to visit refugee family members or to speak at the University of Utah, for example.
Others, however, apply to visit California — to see the Utah Jazz.
And we're not talking Karl Malone in a Lakers jersey.
In his past two years of work at the U.S. Embassy in Croatia, Olympus High and University of Utah graduate Jeffrey Giauque once granted a visa to folks hoping, during a trip to the Golden State, to take in a Utah Jazz game. They just had to see the famous "Stockton-to-Malone" pass in person, one last time.
Such reminders of home are treasured by Giauque, the American vice consul in Zagreb. There, Giauque, who has a doctorate from Ohio State University and speaks Croatian, Dutch, French, German and Russian, grants visas, visits American prisoners, issues travel warnings in cases of natural disasters or other potential threats, and has overseen anti-fraud program initiatives.
Giauque was in town Thursday to address the 2003 annual membership meeting of the Utah Council for Citizen Diplomacy, formerly known as the International Visitors Utah Council. The council aims to promote global understanding and respect, and includes a network of volunteers who host foreign guests of the U.S. State Department's Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs.
Giauque took the embassy job just after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Since, he's seen a dramatic increase in the amount of information placed in a database intended to prevent potential criminals from slipping through U.S. borders.
Before 9/11, workers were not working as diligently to input red flags into the database, he said. "That has changed dramatically . . . by leaps and bounds."
Meanwhile, however, U.S.-European relations "have taken a beating," from disagreements over the U.S. war in Iraq to misconceptions that the United States does not support a European Union.
But Giauque notes Europeans and Americans are very much on the same page. Both agree terrorism, drugs and weapons of mass destruction are global problems, and that ensuring human rights, open economies and democracy can address those problems.
E-mail: jtcook@desnews.com