Transcript of the above video: 

So I am making this video specifically for this DOGE agency we are seeing apparently being brought it by Elon Musk. First of all, it's named after the Doge coin, it's an acronym standing for Department of Government Efficiency, I think. Their ostensible mandate and again this is kind of being rolled out as "oh they are going to have a function in the administration." They may insofar as they advise Donald Trump directly but it is my understanding they are not going to be Cabinet members or anything, so they are not going to require confirmation, so they are effectively Presidential advisors. 

Now that said, it looks like they are going to be advisors that are going to have President Trump's ear pretty well; they're going to be folks he's going to listen to rather carefully, sort of to paraphrase the film, Gangs of New York, where they say, oh the scammer horns didn't run the city”, but they were listened to quite carefully by those who did. I could see a scenario like this sort if playing out with this DOGE thing. Exactly what it looks like remains to be seen, but I expect Elon Musk and Mr. Ramaswamy are going to have at least some level of attention and consideration from Mr. Trump in terms of cutting things and again, budget cuts I think are in the offing in the United States if for no other reason that there seems to be issues with the underlying deficit. 

That said, something that I think is worthwhile to bring to DOGE's attention is USCIS redundancy in the US Family Immigration context. What are we talking about here? Well specifically we are talking about Fiancé Visas, Marriage Visas - so the K-1 Fiancé Visa, K-3 Marriage Visa, not so much in use as it once was - but then the standard Spousal Immigrant Visas like the IR-1 and the CR-1 Visa. So let me explain the redundancy. USCIS go through a prolonged process of doing a background check and basically adjudicating a petition for a K-1, a K-3 a CR-1 or an IR-1 visa and then they send it off to, depending on the Visa category, well actually not depending on the visa category, they send it off to National Visa Center and then depending on the Visa category, for example K-1 and K-3  applications, generally get routed directly to the US Embassy where the interview will take place and then they go ahead and process paperwork. Otherwise, Immigrant Spouse Visas go to the National Visa Center where paperwork is processed through their online portal. 

The point I am trying to make with regard to this though is it's redundant; USCIS goes through a series of functions that then Department of State - either the Embassy or the National Visa Center - basically does all over again. The Department of State, I don't know who's adding what or what the appropriate, how do you handle this, but again if they are visas where the family member of an American citizen or Lawful Permanent Resident is outside of the country, they are going to have to deal with an Embassy anyway. Why not just make that whole process occur at the Embassy? Why have all of this stuff where it goes through USCIS only to then go to an Embassy to do the exact same thing over again? I don't know how many times I've heard from clients over the years, especially when we are dealing with the National Visa Center and that is its own neo-Soviet digital hell, but leave that aside, every time we are dealing with them, I get this from clients where they say, what are we doing here? We have handed all of this in, we've given them all of this stuff. Oftentimes, the only exception to that will be financial documentation pertaining to one's ability to support a fiancé or a spouse in the United States. That will be the only extra documentation that will be handed over to Department of State, compared to the documentation that has been handed over the Department of Homeland Security. Why do we have two different cabinet level, basically Cabinet level departments handling this and why are they doing functionally the same thing? Again, it's redundant, and before DOGE, so to sort of forestall what I can imagine being the defense on this for DOGE, so just have a lookout Elon, have a lookout Vivek for this argument if you do come after USCIS in this context, they will turn back around and say well what does it matter anyway? We are self-funded; we are funded through the fees that people paid us. Well guess what? They are not because as we have seen, they are Government effectively; they go over budget; they don't have enough resources to do what their mandate requires, so frequently, periodically, they go cap in hand back to Congress, to request money even though they are “self-funded”. But they use the “self-funded” excuse any time anybody starts poking around saying hey could you do this more efficiently, they will fire back with oh we are self-funded, and we don't need to, we can do what we want because the taxpayer isn't paying for it. Hey if you get that defense just look at the past, look at the history. Every now and again - they usually let it build up to quite a deficit - but every now and again they come showing back up to Congress cap in hand looking for tax payer money. So no, they are not self-funded. Then on top of that, they oftentimes take money to not even process cases. I've discussed the most sickening case I've seen recently which is just had another recent development in it which is even worse than anything I saw in the case before that. So, I take issue with the notion that they are “self-funded” by taking these funds to do their job, because I have seen cases where they just take the money and don't do what they are supposed to do. At the same time, overall, in a more broader sense in terms of their funding, yeah okay they take fees for the processing fees, but as I talked about, they go cap in hand all the time back to Congress looking for our taxpayer money to fill the shortfall. So effectively yes, they are tax payer funded. 

But the thing to take away from this video is look, these folks are paying in, they are paying a filing fee to do something that is redundant on a level that is really absurd. It goes through, once it goes through USCIS and then effectively it goes back through Department of State to go back through the same function. Say what you will about the first term of Trump and say what you will about Tillerson, a lot to be said there, but the idea of consolidating all of this - especially in a family-based context - again fiancés and spouses of US citizens - consolidating all of this and just having it all occur in Embassies abroad I think would be much better than the current highly redundant, highly inefficient, highly expensive system that really gets the taxpayer coming and going if they use the system at all, because they get the taxpayer coming because they go cap in hand all the time for taxpayer money from Congress. Then they get the tax payer again because if he wants to bring his foreign fiancé or spouse into the United States, he has got to pay filing fees and then he is paying filing fees on a wildly redundant system.

So hopefully, hopefully DOGE, you will go ahead and look at this situation and hopefully figure out a plan to not only make this more efficient in terms of cost efficiency, but also make it more efficient in terms of time, because right now like a Fiancé Visa can take as long as 14 months. I'm seeing Marriage Visas taking 18, 20, 24 months to process and again what is being added by USCIS or conversely what is being added by Department of State? Department of State is at the end of the day responsible for adjudicating the final interview on these cases, so fine I see what their ultimate function is. Why not just have them do everything and take that burden off of USCIS and make that operation more efficient, less redundant overall, and less of a drag on the American taxpayer?