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ResourcesVisa & Immigration LawUS Immigration LawAmerican Immigration: 221g Visa Refusals in 2021

American Immigration: 221g Visa Refusals in 2021

Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing 221g visa refusals and these generally occur after an interview. In this case, we are going to be discussing this in the specific context of the US Embassy here in Bangkok but we also deal with cases out of Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam sometimes, Singapore as well; not so much Malaysia. It just doesn't seem like that comes up very often.  I am going to make the main thrust of this Thailand because that is where we deal with the bulk of our case load but this can be viewed in a more general context regarding 221gs issued at Embassies generally. 

First of all what is it 221g? Well, a 221g is a refusal to issue a Visa and this terminology, "refusal" versus "denial" is sometimes misconstrued. Basically, a refusal under 221g is often "Look we need to see another document. We are going to refuse this case until this document is provided." An outright denial in my opinion is basically when someone is found to have a legal ground of inadmissibility which applies to them and they are denied their visa. So, there may be a waiver, what is called an I-601 waiver, available for a denial of a Visa for example things like crimes evolving moral turpitude can be waived; things involving overstay in the United States, prior overstay, you can deal with a waiver on something like that. Again, it is going to be case specific whether or not you can get a waiver. But a denial and refusal are slightly different things. For example, let's say you go to your interview, you forget to bring your original passport and the Embassy wants to see it and they say "look we are going to issue this 221g, we are refusing to issue a Visa, please provide that document, allow us to review it and then pursuant to our review, we will make a further decision." Presumably in most cases they approve and the Visa gets issued. Generally speaking, 221gs are issued and it provides a year in order to respond. 221gs are viewed in my opinion by folks in the United States, and when I say folks, I mean practicing lawyers, much more alarmingly than for example myself. I deal with the Embassy and in many ways what we do over here, my perspective is a little inverted compared to lawyers in the US because certain things that they do on a routine basis, I very rarely will deal with in certain cases. Certain things that they find are very exotic, we deal with rather routinely and that has a lot to do with geography. 

Long story short, for us we deal with 221gs, especially at the US Embassy in Bangkok rather frequently. We just go ahead and get them whatever they need and keep things moving through. We have seen the volume of 221gs go down a lot. I think a lot of this is a result of certain aspects of the process being brought online rather than paper filing which result in discrepancies that require further follow-up. 

The other thing is especially in 2020, the response or the US Government's response to the COVID-19 situation resulted in just a huge backlog. We just have not seen the volume of interviews that we once saw at the US Embassy. We are hoping that changes sooner rather than later. As of now, it doesn't look like it is going to change very much at least for the foreseeable future here in Thailand. 

Long story short, there are just so many fewer interviews that are going through the Embassy that we are just not seeing 221gs because you need to have an interview in order to see a 221g. So, we will make further videos on this channel as this situation progresses and we will keep you updated as it evolves.