Embassies are usually not foreign soil, whatever popular belief holds
It is widely believed that stepping into an embassy means entering another country. In most cases it does not: the building stays under the host state's jurisdiction. What protects it is a treaty rule barring local authorities from entering without the head of mission's permission, which is why people fleeing persecution sometimes seek refuge inside.
A diplomatic mission is a group representing one state or organisation in another. The main one is normally an embassy in the host capital, headed by an ambassador, while consulates in other major cities handle individuals and businesses; the Philippines, for instance, has its embassy in Washington plus seven consulates-general around the United States. Strictly, the embassy is the delegation itself, and the office where it works is the chancery.
Only a minority of sending states have been granted sovereign status for their embassies. Otherwise the 1961 Vienna Convention supplies privileges such as immunity from most local laws, full immunity for diplomats and inviolability of the premises and even of diplomats' private homes. That inviolability has allowed North Koreans at risk of deportation from China to shelter in third-country embassies there while diplomats negotiate their onward travel. It has also been broken: the British embassy in Beijing was repeatedly invaded in 1967, American diplomats were held hostage in Tehran from 1979 to 1981, and the Japanese ambassador's residence in Lima was seized in 1996.
The vocabulary carries history. Missions between Commonwealth countries are high commissions led by high commissioners, equal in status to embassies, and a Commonwealth embassy in a non-Commonwealth state is generally expected to help citizens of other member countries lacking their own mission. Legations, headed by ministers who ranked below ambassadors, were once the commonest kind of mission but faded after the Second World War. Missions to the United Nations are simply permanent missions.
When a dispute flares, a country often recalls its ambassador as a signal, a step short of breaking relations; a deputy then runs the mission as chargé d'affaires. Rome shows the system's quirks, since many states keep separate missions to Italy and to the Holy See. Governments that lack recognition, such as Somaliland, run representative offices that promote trade without formal diplomatic status.
Source: Diplomatic mission
