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ResourcesVisa & Immigration LawUS Immigration LawNew Financial Support Rules for CR-1 and IR-1 Visas from Thailand

New Financial Support Rules for CR-1 and IR-1 Visas from Thailand

Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing the rules regarding financial support of an immigrant spouse to the United States coming in in either a CR-1 Visa category or an IR-1 Visa category.            

For those who are unaware, the current Administration in the United States is taking a much tougher line with respect to Immigration, most notably scrutinizing whether or not a prospective immigrant, or an immigrant in the United States, is likely to become what is called a public charge. By public charge we generally mean those who would be beneficiaries of benefits in the United States, sometimes colloquially referred to as welfare, but basically certain types of means-tested benefits in the US although the current scope is being expanded by the new guidelines. Also the requirements with respect to income are increasing compared to times past.  Overall what we are looking at is just a sort of a general raising of the overall threshold for proving up whether one can sponsor and support, in this case their immigrant spouse from the Kingdom of Thailand. 

In the past, I won't say the guidelines were "easy" to overcome; they most certainly were not. They were adjudicated rather carefully. They want to make sure that an individual's spouse can support them or that there is some other joint sponsor who can provide support in the United States.  That being stated, under the new guidelines I think the old guidelines will look, I hesitate to use the word lax, but they will definitely look a lot less stringent in comparison.

So, things to think about moving forward.  Financial support is going to be a major issue with respect to CR-1 and IR-1 Visa applications coming from Thailand in the relatively near future. We will try to do videos to update the information that we have on this topic as soon as we can. For now and at least for the relatively foreseeable future we are going to have to just sort of wait and see exactly how this plays out as a practical matter.