Transcript of the above video: 

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing the interviews associated with US Marriage Visas. For those who unaware, yes, US Marriage Visas come in multiple categories actually: the K-3, the CR-1 or the IR-1. Depending on your facts in your given case, whether or not you want to file a supplementary K-3 application as opposed to deal with an Immigrant Spousal Visa, which in most cases is what you're going to have to deal with anyway due to the Doctrine of Administrative Closure at the National Visa Center. And again, CR-1 or IR-1 status will depend on the duration of the marriage at the time that the person enters the United States. 

That being said, what we're talking about here in this video is interviews for the Marriage Visa itself. So you've gone through the whole process; you have dealt with Department of Homeland Security; you have waded through the bog of National Visa Center or if you're one of our clients for example, you're letting us do that, and then now we are getting over to the interview. A question often asked is, "can I go to the interview with my spouse?" Me the American citizen. 

Long story short, the answer to that is due to security protocols - at least here at the Embassy in Bangkok - No it is not going to be possible for anyone to attend the interview other than the applicant. Now I will have people send me - and I have dealt with this in the past couple of months - somebody sent me something from Department of State's main website somewhere that said, "oh folks that are family can attend interviews." I don't know where they found this but after 20 years, I looked at that and I said all right, sent in an email to the Embassy, and I said "am I missing something?" and they said, "No, due to security protocols, we only want the actual applicant to be there on the date." I do get it. Folks who have a spouse who is Thai, and we primarily deal with Spousal Visas out of Thailand, we do occasionally handle Immigration from other Southeast Asian countries back to the United States, but Thailand is where we're based at so the vast majority of cases we deal with are Thai, the occasional Laos, maybe Cambodian - although right now not so many Cambodian cases. 

That being said, again can the significant other, can the spouse attend the interview? Can the American spouse attend the interview with their Thai counterpart? And the answer is basically "NO". Again, there may be extenuating circumstances where it may be required. The Consular Officer could always, I guess, request it, although really that's not within their presumed remit if you will, because again the application pertains to the applicant. The petition, the underlying Department of Homeland Security petition, for the benefits has already been adjudicated and approved if you're at the Embassy stage. So their take on it is there is really no place for that American spouse; we don't really need to see them. That said, I have discussed this in other videos. I will occasionally need to make a personal appearance at the Embassy depending on extenuating circumstances in a given case; I'm actually one of the rare Attorneys on Earth that actually does Consular processing like that. It's kind of a niche thing, but I've done it for a number of years, and I don't think that's going to stop any time soon. 

But the thing that needs to be taken away from this video is No, you're not going to be able to attend the interview. I'm not probably going to be able to attend the interview again, unless there's some overarching reason to override sort of the default policy at the Embassy, it's probably not going to happen. The question then is well look; I really want my spouse prepared; I don't want this person to have to go through this sort of stress and things. Look I get it. I myself have been an immigrant. I emigrated effectively to Thailand; I've been through the Visa process, Residency and all of this citizenship stuff. I get what it's like to be in an interview that can sort of make or break your status, or you feel like can make a break your status and it's nerve racking. I get why spouses would want to be on hand for their loved one during that. The fact of the matter is, it's just not going to be an option under most circumstances for most folks to be able to do that, and what we strive to provide in terms of our service with regard to interview preparation - which I do a number of interview preps in any given month - I have got a whole batch of them coming up; it seems like they always pile up going into the holidays, but yeah we do deal with interview preparation. Part of that is literally hand walking our applicants through the process of assisting them with police clearance certificates, assisting them with medical documentation, as well as I personally do interview preparation where I go through model questions in a mock interview with the applicant to try to make them as comfortable as possible. My personal opinion is what we really add is a day-to-day understanding what the security protocols are at the Embassy so that person knows what to do when to get there. You go to this place, you have to stand in line; you wait for somebody to look at your stuff; then they let you in, you wait here; then you're called up to this window, they look at some stuff; then you are called to the next line, you go through that and then you have to deal with aspects of the actual Consular apparatus from that point forward. And depending on the outcome of the interview, again everybody is driving for an approval, but sometimes they may want further document and they may issue what's called a 221g Refusal pending further documentation. In those cases, we assist further as well where we can go ahead and get them whatever they want, get it back to them, and try to get that Visa issued as quickly as possible. 

Again it is a very, any immigration proceeding is not something you really want to be going through, but we try to make it as painless as possible. By the way, the thing to understand, the interview is like the culmination of months of processing, it could be even into years in some cases, pretty rare we get into the multi-years but it can be over a year, certainly, that's always possible. So it's overall the end of the process. It's where people get the most anxious because they really just want to be finished. They've been through this exhaustingly Byzantine, almost neo-Soviet-like process of going through legal immigration and it is especially that way when you have practiced in prior eras and you know what the process used to look like and it wasn't this, and we really have added precisely zero value to anything by making the process the way it is now, but it's just the way it is now, and you have to deal with it. That is primarily what I do. For those that feel a bit overwhelmed about the entire US Immigration process, either in the K-3, CR-1 or IR-1 categories, it may not be a terrible idea to contact a legal professional, gain some insight and guidance into how best to proceed.