Transcript of the above video: 

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing Trump's so-called Visa pause; I did videos on this over the past few weeks since it has been announced. Initially they were talking about a Visa ban, but no it's not a ban. Basically they have said that they are pausing issuance of visas from certain jurisdictions, most notably and pertinent to this channel especially, we are talking about visas issued not only from here in Thailand, but Myanmar, Laos and Cambodia as well, that from all of those jurisdictions, currently they are not issuing visas specifically Immigrant Visas which we would be talking about the K-3 which is technically a Non-Immigrant Visa but it's a supplemental petition for an Immigrant Visa - the CR-1 and the IR-1 Spousal visas - as well as at least as of the time of this video, we're going to presume K-1 Fiancé(e) Visas as well, even though again strictly speaking not an Immigrant Visa, it's actually a dual intent Non-immigrant Visa but it is processed by the Immigrant Visa unit. So let's go ahead and presume all of those types of visas are going to be paused.

The reason for the video is to express my sort of hunch as to what I see the situation unfolding, because they have said look it is a pause; this isn't going to be indefinite. They are retooling what's called the analysis or the framework if you will, the institutional framework for analyzing what is called public charge issues i.e. whether or not somebody who receives a Visa is going to go to the United States and become a public charge i.e. they are going to go on welfare. Now I understand all of that. I am not so sure a Visa pause was exactly necessary in order to make these changes but look, as I've discussed in many other videos, this Administration they have their policy on illegal immigration which I tend to agree with, but I think that the things that they do including this, regarding legal immigration are a bit, let's call it heavy-handed, I'll put it that way. That said, the reason for the video is I am making this, and again take this for what it is, it is speculation to some extent but I have been doing this almost 20 years and when I see certain developments it just causes things in my brain to say, "oh, maybe there's something to that", notably the issue of when this pause is going to end. And I have had cases now being scheduled for interview in April. We were sitting here in January, and this is going back into the first of the year. We weren't able to get anything scheduled basically through to the end of December and I think they did that in anticipation of this new policy, and there is one case in particular I'm really not thrilled about that they did this on because that person went all the way through the process of getting an I-601 Waiver in order to only go back and go through the re-interview process and not be able to get an appointment until April and then have this Visa pause also put into effect. But we have also had other cases scheduled for April. That's a ways out and it's I don't think it's apropos of nothing that the Embassy is scheduling interviews for these type of cases now in April at the earliest; that's if your case processes out through the Department of Homeland Security and National Visa Center in order to become eligible for an interview appointment to begin with. But the soonest ones that we have been able to process over the course of the past month, six weeks, has been in April. And in light of the fact they said it was a pause, in my mind for some reason, especially when I heard it was going to be a brief pause, just in my mind 90 days just popped in there. Again to paraphrase Ghostbusters where Ray says, "it just popped in there", it's apropos of nothing. It's just in my mind that was sort of what I thought. They tend to do things kind of in quarterly thinking. Well April would be basically the first part of the second quarter before we would start seeing new interviews, and I would think with a kind of delay like that, they have said, hey we are going to continue processing like normal, but we are not going to issue visas until we end the pause.

To my mind, in the totality of the facts, it looks to me like there is a very good probability that this Visa pause is going to end in April, at least as it pertains to Visas processed out of the US Embassy here in Thailand. Again this is speculation but based on the facts that I'm aware of at this time, that's what it looks like to me. That being said, we will certainly be keeping you updated on this channel as the situation evolves.