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ResourcesVisa & Immigration LawUS Immigration LawIR-1 and CR-1 Visas from Thailand: NVC Processing and 221g Refusal

IR-1 and CR-1 Visas from Thailand: NVC Processing and 221g Refusal

Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing the CR-1 and the IR-1 Immigrant Spouse Visa. We are discussing this in the context of someone who is married to a United States citizen or lawful permanent resident and we are discussing the back end of the process as I call it, the National Visa Center processing phase as well as the US Embassy processing phase abroad.

The long story short with respect to this video is unlike the K visas, the Immigrant Visas there is a rather lengthy process of getting documentation into the online system at the National Visa Center. Then on top of that personnel at the National Visa Center sort of pre-adjudicate, in my opinion they shouldn't be, but they pre-adjudicate the documentation associated with an Immigrant Spouse Visa case before that case can even get on file at the Embassy and get an interview. For this reason, I generally see less 221gs. For clarification, a 221g is a refusal pending further documentation that is issued by an Embassy or Consulate abroad after an interview for a Visa where they say "hey look everything looks all right but we need something else or we need clarification on some issue", and under those circumstances the will issue this document and then you clarify or you fix whatever the issue is and generally speaking they issue the Visa. Folks don't like seeing these. They hope that the interview is the end of the road and as we have done videos on that, it may not necessarily be the case. You may have to deal with some further follow up, tie some loose ends up and move forward.

Generally speaking though, in Immigrant Spousal visa cases we see less 221gs, in my opinion because you are front loading all of this stuff with the National Visa Center. That is not necessarily a good thing. The National Visa Center in my opinion could do things a lot better. I don't particularly like the CX system. I don't particularly like their digital platforms. I think it is rather clunky and frankly in cases that in the past when it was on paper, cases that had some exigent circumstances in them, or had some extraneous circumstances, just non-routine matters it could be dealt with on paper. If nothing else, you could put a cover letter on it and explain what is going on. With the digital system, it wants everything to be shoe-horned into that digital format and sometimes you have got a case that is a square peg trying to go into a round hole. I am not a huge fan of NVC that said I will give it credit that we do generally see less 221gs in IR-1 and CR-1 visas compared to 221gs in K-1 and K-3 Visa cases.