Transcript of the above video: 

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing K-1 Fiancée Visas, specifically the underlying petition filed with the Department of Homeland Security's United States Citizenship and Immigration Service, the approval of said petition and the ability of that petition to expire and be reauthorized. What are we talking about? 

Well this is something that really freaks out a lot of my clients is we will file a case with DHS, the petition will process through USCIS, presumably all things go well, you get approved on the petition, now the petition has to go to the National Visa Center before being forwarded to the US Embassy here. What happens though if the petition expires? People really freak out about this. 

Well the Immigration Officers, I should say the Consular Officers at the US Embassy here in Thailand, do have what's called pocket authority to reauthorize those petitions and quite honestly, it happens as a matter of course because oftentimes these petitions - they have a four month validity usually - and heck by the time it goes through National Visa Center and gets over here to the Embassy and we get an appointment and get them through, we could burn through that 4 months pretty easily, easier than you think, especially depending on the backlog at the Embassy here. So what do they do? Well again, the Consular Officer has the pocket authority to say “Oh, I'm just re-validating that petition, that petition is fine.” So as long as you are keeping your case moving, ultimately it's probably not going to be a big deal the notion that the underlying petition expired. 

Now that said, if you let it languish, problems can happen. In fact the Embassy will eventually send you a notice that "hey we're just going to close this case, we're going to terminate it because we don't want the backlog. If you're not going to process out the Visa, we don't want to mess with it." So you do have to be kind of careful with issues associated with petition expiration, but if you are staying on top of or you have a legal representative who is staying on top of the case, it shouldn't really be a problem.