Integrity Legal - Law Firm in Bangkok | Bangkok Lawyer | Legal Services Thailand Back to
Integrity Legal

Legal Services & Resources 

Up to date legal information pertaining to Thai, American, & International Law.

Contact us: +66 2-266 3698

info@integrity-legal.com

ResourcesVisa & Immigration LawUS Immigration LawK-1 Fiancée Visas: Why Is Everything Taking So Long?

K-1 Fiancée Visas: Why Is Everything Taking So Long?

Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing K-1 Visas. I have had lot of folks asking me lately “why is everything taking so long?” Well I really hate it when people just answer "COVID" because it is kind of a dead answer, there is not a lot of analysis there. It is a factor. Another factor is the fact that unfortunately the last Administration decided to try to deprioritize K-1 Visas and the sort of administrative bureaucratic ramifications of that have not fully worn off. We are still kind of dealing with some of that.

I do think it is wearing off there. There is a thawing of the backlog associated with COVID and then some of those seem to be intentional monkey wrenches that were thrown into the overall system by the prior Administration in order to, the only thing I can explain is, it was sort of to become intentionally obtuse to the point of making things difficult to the near impossible to process through the system. Ultimately we managed to move everybody through but yeah it is not as fast as it once was, there's no doubt about that.  I do get a lot of emails from folks that are “well when do you think it is going to be done?" Well, I could have an opinion on when I think it could happen and unfortunately it is not going to have a ton of relevance. Now I can provide some insight into "well the last few cases we have seen did this so it may seem logical that yours will probably operate along the same time frame because for example you filed at a similar time or you have a similar kind of case", but trying to provide a lot of certainty with respect to estimates of timing it is kind of a fool's errand in a lot of ways because I don't think it provides a lot of value because especially right now there are just so many variables that are slowing things down. 

Now that said, there are things that can be done to try to mitigate against that. We certainly try to do that but at least for now yeah it is taking a while and I don't really see it letting up greatly in the immediate future. I do think as the weeks and months progress and especially, it has always been my observation that the fourth quarter of the year up until December, December it just seems like there are always a plethora of holidays and things start to slow down a lot going into a New Year and then usually a couple weeks into the New Year things start to kind of kick back on again. But yeah we are hitting kind of what I think of is the main sweet spot with respect to US Immigration; not a lot of holidays going forward in the US governmental system at least for the next couple of months and for that reason, yeah I think things will probably be moving at a pretty good clip but it remains to be seen just exactly how fast things will get going now that there really isn't a lot of good reason to see these cases being delayed.