Comment by secthrowaway
14 years ago
I'm actually surprised by this. I work with a ton of people with foreign born wives (many not even green carded yet) -- soldiers tend to marry where they are first stationed.
Also, I work with plenty of people with TS/SCIs who have used drugs in the past.
The key is just being honest with the investigators.
You are right that people with too much debt, gambling problems, current drug use, etc. don't get one. But that makes sense. I've worked with some pretty sketchy characters though and they didn't have a problem getting or keeping there clearances.
I don't think I've ever personally known somebody who had theirs denied, I've known one person who had their taken from them for doing some questionable things.
It could have been the particular agency that was doing the clearance in my case. With a military customer, I saw less issues, but with the customer I was referring to in my previous post, there were lots of denials. I think the location of foreign born wives is important in this case. The few cases I saw were countries we don't have good intelligence relationships with, in asia and the middle east.
Yes, close personal contacts with people from unfriendly countries can be a problem. However, I do know people with clearances who are from several countries the U.S. is not particularly friendly with.
Quite often it could be that the investigator could not ascertain the relationships on the wife's side and/or they don't have a citizenship yet.