Transcript of the above video: 

As the title of this video suggests, we are asking the question can the overall K-1 Visa process - and what we are talking about here are Fiancé Visas - so the significant other, the fiancé, someone you intend to marry, fiancé of a US citizen, is eligible for certain benefits if a US citizen petitions for a Fiancé Visa. As we have discussed in other videos, this is a non-immigrant, dual intent visa which allows the visa bearer to enter the United States, therein be able to have lawful status for 90 days for the sole purpose of getting married and then filing for Adjustment of Status, aka Green Card status, in the United States.

So this is a pretty common category of Visa that processes through the US Embassy here in Bangkok. But it recently came to my attention within the past week, one of my staffers who deals with the process, like hands-on, gets her hands dirty moving paper around, pushing it into the Embassy system, getting visas back out, we do all the interview prep for a number of our clients in assisting them and being prepared for possible questions that may be asked at the interview, we assist them in honestly and concisely explaining their situation in an interview and basically in situations past, or in the past I should say, once approved for a Visa, folks would have their passport, the way you actually call it is a “Visad” passport, like a stamped envelope, the Visad passport would be sent out by mail basically; I think generally they use EMS or registered mail here in Thailand. 

Well guess what, in their infinite wisdom, now they have said okay, we're going to send it out by DHL in the event that a K-1 Visa - or any visa for that matter - I've done another video contemporaneously with this one where I talk about this in the context of Marriage Visas, namely the K-3, CR-1 and IR-1 Visa, but with regard to the Fiancé Visa it's the same deal. They now send it out by DHL, and some of our clients opt to have us receive the passport at our office, others of our clients say no, have it sent directly to me, whatever, but now DHL is going to be the courier that sends this back and it's going to be C.O.D. - you owe 300 Baht at the end of this process. I have got to be honest with you, I am not one to really criticize the Embassy all that frequently as it pertains to the overall US Immigration process, but honestly I really hope, okay maybe rethinking and pushing this back, I sort of know the way bureaucracy works, that may be too tall in order; that may be too much to ask for. Maybe not. I mean Trump is really shaking things up, you never know. But I have got to be honest with you, I find it very disconcerting that it just seems like they just keep adding steps and costs and just extra mechanisms that have to be triggered so the counter mechanisms can be triggered. I mean it reminds me of the booby traps in the movie The Goonies, that's what it's like now. In fact, we might even do a thumbnail and show some of the booby traps from Goonies and just put in K-1 Visa process for this video because look, at the end of the day, that is what it feels like. You have to deal with the Department of Homeland Security, you have got to process to all their protocols. Then if you don't get a Request for Evidence and they think everything's okay, they approve it. Then it's got to go over to the National Visa Center. You have got to wait around for them to get their act together to send it over to the Embassy. By the way you pay interview fees on the back end of this process; you have got to deal with paying interview fees at the US Embassy, and then they go through interview. Shouldn't this 300 Baht be covered in the interview fee? Shouldn't the Embassy at the very, I mean forget the fee, okay. I get it. Maybe it costs the Embassy a lot of money every year to mail these out, and maybe they need to do a P.O.D just to economize. Okay, reasonable people, I can understand that. Why not just incorporate it into the fee? Why add all these extra steps onto everybody? And really think about this. If you are done with the K-1 Visa under current processing time frames, that's anywhere between 10 and 18 months, again a sort of standard case load. There are a bunch of different steps in between initially filing - which getting a filing petition together in and of itself is no mean feat - and then you've got to go through USCIS and then you have got to go over to National Visa Center, then you have got to go over and deal with the Embassy and you got to deal with all of their little picayune requirements in order to get the case processed through. 

Look again, I've done this for 17 years; I'm used to bureaucracy, I don't have any problem with that per se, with some of that. Bureaucracy just is what it is. It goes along with government benefits, Immigration is always going to have bureaucracy, I'm not naïve. But that being said, there is a certain point where you have to say, when is enough, enough? You've put these people through at least a year of processing, basically just a bunch of paperwork, in a very redundant system when you go through Department of Homeland Security and then basically the National Visa Center or the Embassy here - the Consular Officer adjudicating - basically does the exact same thing it took months on in for DHS to process through and then you get your visa issued and then they say, "oh hey we need 300 extra Baht before we will hand you back your own passport." It just seems to my mind if nothing else, the optics on it look bad. Again, I don't expect we'll see something like this particularly rolled back, but that being said, we will certainly keep you updated on this channel as the situation evolves.