22 U.S.C. § 4043 — Participants

(a) Career appointees, candidates, and chiefs of mission. Except as subsection (d) provides, these Service members are entitled to System benefits: (1) every member serving under a career appointment or as a career candidate under section 3946 who is in the Senior Foreign Service or assigned to a Foreign Service Schedule salary class; and (2) every chief of mission who is not covered by paragraph (1), who served as chief of mission for at least 20 total years, and who paid the required special contribution for each year under section 4045. (b) Executive-branch appointees. An otherwise eligible Service member appointed by the President, with the Senate’s advice and consent or by the President alone, does not lose eligibility merely by accepting that appointment. (c) Binational Center Grantees. In addition to subsection (a) participants, a person appointed as a Binational Center Grantee who completed at least 5 years of satisfactory service as a grantee or under another appointment under the Foreign Service Act of 1946 may become a participant and receive credit for that service if the required special contribution is made under section 4045(d) or (f). (d) Exclusion. A person subject to the Foreign Service Pension System described in part II is not a participant in this System.