Transcript of the above video: 

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing the issue of guarantees in the context of US Marriage Visas. For those who are unaware, the K-3, CR-1 and IR-1 Visas are Marriage Visa applications. As I have discussed in other videos, the K-3 is a Non-Immigrant visa application created under the Life Act when they created a supplemental K-3 Visa petition that only American citizens could use for their spouses as at the time, the backlog for bringing in an Immigrant Spouse was quite profound. So they created this sort of Non-Immigrant K category visa to try and basically speed up the process for those who are married to Americans. 

As a practical matter we don't see K-3 visas processed nearly as often as we once did because they improved the underlying processing protocols at USCIS, and as a result felt they no longer needed to utilize the K-3. So as a practical matter we often see the K-3 Marriage Visa "administratively closed" rather than processing all the way through. 

That being said, the question posed by this video regarding all Marriage Visas is the issue of a guarantee. I thought of making this video after reading a recent article from the Pattaya Mail, that's Pattaya Mail.com, the article is titled: Red Flags you are being conned in your visa application. Quoting directly: "The following are the most frequent clues that you are being scammed by agents who will grab your cash and not deliver your Visa." Quoting further: "You are offered a "guarantee" the Visa will definitely be issued." Unfortunately bucket shops and other fly-by-night operations in the Immigration space - be it Thai or American Immigration - will oftentimes make these kind of guarantee promises. It is one of the telltale signs of somebody you probably don't want to be dealing with because anybody who says that an Immigration benefit can be guaranteed quite frankly is if not an idiot they are as close to one as I can think of because again especially in the US Immigration context, no outcome regarding applications for these type of benefits can be guaranteed. 

Now that being said, I've done this for 17 years. I have some expertise into how the process works and what the likely outcomes are, but that said, anybody offering you a guarantee, that's somebody you want to steer well clear from because quite frankly, I don't think that it's ethically correct to offer a guarantee in such circumstances just simply because one cannot predict what the outcome of any case is going to be. And at the end of the day, it is the exercise of plenary discretion on the part of a Consular Officer which again cannot be predicted and cannot be guaranteed. So the thing to take away from this video is anybody you are dealing with who's offering a guarantee in the context of a US Marriage Visa should be somebody to be dealt with very, very cautiously if not avoided outright.