Hi All. 

I was wondering if anyone here knows if US naturalized citizens (with foreign national relatives - some living in the US and some in the native country) have been granted a security clearance by either the NSA or CIA in recent years. 

That is to say, passed the poly, made it through adjudication, and received an entry on duty date.

I have relatives (extended family) abroad. The contact is casual and infrequent. 

Also, anyone have insights into the CIA's or NSA's adjudicative process? What I know so dar is that the decision cannot be appealed.

I will check out vault. 


Also, the native country is not hostile to the US and not of any strategic importance. 

From what I understand, people are never denied clearance at CIA and NSA based on security decisions but rather on suitabiltiy grounds. Therefore, the decisions are never open to appeal. 

From what I have heard - the security personnel considers the whole person concept but from a lot of the security decisions I've read online for industrial clearances, the DSS denied a lot of people clearances based on the foreign influence issue. Some of these negative decisions were later overturned on appeal. However, if the original decisionmaking process is indicative of security personnel across the board (DSS, CIA, NSA, etc). then a reasonable assumption would be that having relatives abroad is, as one person here said, "a clearance killer". Furthermore, if these negative security decisions are put under the unsuitability umbrella at the CIA then the decision cannot be appealed like it would be in the industrial clearance categories. 

So, the long and short of it - It would be nice to get some kind of emperical evidence that a naturalized citizen with foreign national relatives did indeed make it through the clearance process successfully. However, I suspect that that would be hard to find online, perhaps because those who have been cleared are no longer reading this board or the one on vault. 

Thanks for the replies.