After retiring from the military, I’ve been working and living abroad for over seven years now. I have accepted a position back in the US that will require a Secret security clearance. I held a top secret while on active duty for over 20 years.
For the past 4 years I’ve been in a gay relationship with a Brazilian guy and we eventually want to marry and have him join me in the US.
So how will this all play out with the clearance investigation process? Is this going to disqualify me for a clearance or should I possibly think of ending the relationship?
All MY opinion . . . If you have been living outside of the U.S. for seven years and you have a company willing to submit you for a clearance, THEY don’t think that living outside the U.S. and having the number of foreign contacts that you do will prevent you from clearing.
ANY intimate relationship with a foreign national is going to present an issue for the investigation. His job and his family could be issues. Does he have any family with government or military ties? The fact that it’s a gay relationship shouldn’t make any difference. Ending the relationship will not make much of a difference either. You’re going to have to list him as a contact and there’s no way to prevent it from looking like you ended the relationship in order to get your clearance and THEN bring him here.
Be prepared to spend a lot of time talking about this . . .
Thank you for your response. A little more information. We have both been living in Dubai. He left Brazil when he was 17 and went to Dublin to learn to speak English and then after one year went to Dubai to work. He has worked as a waiter, bartender and most recently, working for a tourism company in the reservations department. I’ve met his parents when they came to Dubai for vacation. His mother works at a hotel and his father works in the coffee bean farms harvesting the beans. Neither of them speak any English and I don’t speak Portuguese, so there wasn’t mush communication on my part. I have never been to Brazil. He is departing Dubai to go back to school in Dublin for digital marketing and I will depart to go back to the US. There is no government work for anyone that I’m aware of in his family and no government work for him. I don’t know if any of this information helps.
I do work for a local company as an instructor for the UAE military. I am seconded to an American company. The American company maintains the agreement between the UAE and the US Dept of State and DoD that allows me to do the job I am currently doing. They ensure we stay within the guidelines of the agreement and work closely with DoS and DoD. So I work with the military but I don’t socialize with any of them outside of work. I’m not sure if I’ll need to list everyone in the unit where I instruct as that alone will be a long list.
I do have a lot of contacts here. None of them are affiliated with any government or military. They all are from friendly nations, such as U.K, Brazil, France, Spain, Portugal, South Africa, etc. I don’t have any contacts with what would be considered hostile nations. Dubai is a melting pot of nations. The expats here outnumber the actual local population.