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As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing K-1 Visas and the prospects of the process of obtaining a K-1 Visa in 2025, or more specifically in a Trump Administration. We are looking at a situation now going into January of 2025, where we will see the transfer of power from the Biden Administration to the Trump Administration in the United States. That is very likely to have a number of implications in an immigration context most notably in the first Trump Administration, there was a de-prioritization of K-1 Visas. For those who are unaware, the K-1 has its own sort of processing line if you will. It goes through its own set of process compared to the 1-130, the petition for Immigrant Spouse Visas, it's a different thing, and oddly, it's kind of a fluke of the system if you will, Fiancé Visas tend to process faster than Marriage Visas. That is not always the case but in many cases that is the case. 

Under Trump it seemed to me there was a policy decision to try to reverse that phenomenon if you will by sort of de-prioritizing K-1 cases, specifically when they would hit National Visa Center, they would get done with USCIS and they would get over into the State Department, it was like they kind of de-prioritized Fiancés compared to Marriage Visas, compared to standard Immigrant Spouse Visas. In my personal opinion they don't really have any right to do that - they really shouldn't be doing that - but they did it. Will that happen again under a new Trump Administration? I think it's very possible. My hope is he learned some lessons in his first term and has had time to reflect that "hey legal immigrants are not the problem, so why go after messing with all of this legal immigration?" It's illegal immigration - in my opinion invasion - that's really the problem for the United States most notably along the Southern border. My hope is he has kind of a reasonable reaction to that and says, "look we need to go after illegals, let's not mess with people who are trying to go through the process the correct way."

That being said, we've seen it before, we've seen this sort of de-prioritization before, so it is certainly possible. How do you mitigate against this? Well not really much that can be done other than it may not be a bad idea if you are already looking at getting a loved one into the United States, getting a petition on file sooner rather than later may be the best course of action if you want to try to avoid any possible problems under a new Trump Administration because again notwithstanding the fact he's probably going to be more aware of how to change things than he was when he went in the first time, these things don't stop on a dime; bureaucratic sort of momentum is what it is, or inertia is what it is and you're not going to be able to just instantaneously snap your fingers and completely overhaul the system, so it would presumably take some time. So again, that's why maybe the only piece of advice I can give to people to try to mitigate against this eventuality is again to get a petition on file sooner rather than later.