Transcript of the above video: 

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing the Domicile Paradox. What are we talking about here? Well I have made videos on this in the past, written about it at length. The Domicile Paradox, it was most acutely felt in cases that I dealt with, in cases involving what were called local filings. So there was a time USCIS, the United States Citizenship and Immigration Service, had a local office here in Thailand and we would often assist expats in processing their spouse's visa petition here in Thailand through that local office. Now the Paradox there came up with regard to domicile because they wanted to see that the American had, and again there's a misnomer here with regard to domicile, because the State Department has this wildly different notion of what domicile means from what the legal definition is. And to be clear, domicile is actually something you deal with like day one of Civil Procedure 1 in Law school. It's one of the basic legal notions that exists at law and State Department just disregards that and has come up with their own basically notion of what domicile is which is basically residence. Domicile literally means any place you have stayed that you have resided at, that you intend to return to. An example of this would be let's say you are from Kansas and you leave your house in Wichita to travel here to Thailand for a two-week vacation and then return to Kansas. The time that you are in Thailand and you are staying at a hotel for two weeks or whatever, you're not residing in Thailand, you're temporarily there and then you are returning back to your home in Kansas; that home is your domicile, it's the place you reside that you intend to return to. Again Domicile Paradox gets kind of difficult but in my experience with State Department folks, especially Consular Officers, they think of domicile as residence. They want and I've had to send people actually back ahead of their spouses that are sitting on a 221g Request for Further Evidence to deal with the Domicile Paradox. It's really in my opinion rather ridiculous and kind of a non-issue, it's for lack of a better term of a very tacky kind of issue.

That being said, I thought of making this video after reading a recent article from Breitbart, that's breitbart.com, the article is titled: Trump ending automatic Green Cards for migrants marrying U.S. citizens. and quoting directly from one excerpt: "One new wrinkle in request for marriage-related Green Cards is Residency. The Trump Administration is prioritizing a shared domicile for the Immigrant and the US citizen a requirement that was not prioritized in the past." Yeah, I've seen this before. This happened in Trump Administration 1. Frankly they would look, in my opinion, for reasons to disrupt, delay or just be generally obtuse regarding matters. This domicile issue especially for cases that are processing outside the United States, I think it's a really very much a non-issue. Now that being said, in anti-fraud matters pertaining to domestic processing that might be a little bit different where it's like well wait, you are not living together, yet both of you are in the United States; that I could see being sort of an issue. 

That said, look marriages are different. Different people have different arrangements in their marriage, and it doesn't necessarily mean the marriage is not bona fide. It just doesn't look like a traditional marriage may look, and this then gets into the question of what does that mean? The bureaucracy doesn't just get to come up with what they think a traditional marriage is. Again, it has to follow the law. Now again, the domicile issue has come up in the past and okay in the Consular Processing, from the Consular Processing perspective which is what I personally have dealt with in the past, I sort of got it where it's this person, they have been living in for example Thailand, they have been away for years and they are coming back and they may not actually have a house or something yet. Okay, I get where the Domicile Paradox can cause some issues and it might be justified that Consular Officers have an issue with that. 

That being said, it looks like "Domicile", what the authorities call Domicile, it looks like it's going to be an increasingly important component of immigration petitions moving forward. So that being said, we will be keeping you updated on this channel as best we can as the situation evolves.