In a windowless fluorescent haze, in the depths of Criminal Court in Queens, a defendant making his first appearance before a judge hears a long, numbing list of forms changing hands.

“24030, 25020, 71031,” a prosecutor says as each piece of paper is dropped into the defendant’s file.

First, though, comes what sounds like a far more consequential exchange:

“The people serve the Vienna Convention Notice,” the prosecutor informs the court.

Only in Queens, a borough that is home to nearly 1.1 million immigrants, the city’s international airport and perhaps New York’s most international hospital, would a 1963 treaty written to protect foreign nationals figure in the most mundane of court proceedings.

Officially, the Vienna Convention notice assures citizens of other countries who are arrested that they may contact their consulates for assistance. Unofficially, its mention seems to go unremarked upon by just about all of the 70,000 or so defendants who pass through the arraignment court in Kew Gardens each year.