
Jim enjoyed his reputation as a difficult officer to get by, and he reveled in rejecting the majority of the applicants he interviewed. Over coffee he would recount how he had uncovered their scams and saved our country from intruders. Once, he told me of the local surgeon who had fed him an unconvincing story of wanting to travel to the US to learn a new surgical procedure. What he really wanted, Jim said, was to earn an American surgeon’s large salary. He had denied the man a visa.

A week after the surgery, Jim reversed his decision to deny the surgeon a visa.
He also stopped narrating his endless bitter stories of scams uncovered, which was a great personal relief to me.