Transcript of the above video: 

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing a new fee associated with the K-3, CR-1, or IR-1 Visa. For those who are unaware, the K-3 Visa is a supplemental Non-Immigrant K Visa petition for the spouses of American citizens. It is sort of an expedited petition, not exactly overly used right now because it's underlying necessity sort of got called into question by the Administrative Bureaucracy that is the US Immigration apparatus. 

That being said, the IR-1 and the CR-1 visa, the Immigrant Spouse Visas, the I-130 petition Spouse Visas, those are in pretty frequent use. We process a number of those each year here in Thailand. But the reason for the video and the reason I thought of making this video is one of my staffers just told me - just in the last few days, it has been sometime between last week and this week - I think this must be a new fee coming in in 2025 associated with getting a Visa issued after interview. It looks like the US Embassy is going to start sending out these issued visas by DHL now and they are C.O.D, so they are payable on delivery. You have to pay apparently 300 Baht, that is what my staff is now telling me. So yeah, just kind of a little alert on the very back end of this process. 

I have another video I made contemporaneously with this one talking about this specifically in the K-1 Visa context and frankly I get a little negative in that video I probably maybe should, shouldn't, I don't know. I'm not thrilled with the fact that they have increasingly made the US, the legal US Immigration process for spouses of American citizens, for fiancés of American citizens, for the children and step children of American citizens - setting aside all the employment-based visas and stuff - I mean we are talking about family members of US citizens and Lawful Permanent Residents of the United States and they just seem to keep adding on obtuseness - it's just one little extra step and another little extra step; one little fee and another little fee here there and yonder, and it adds up and it accretes over time and you just get this situation where it just seems like, I mean how many more extra steps of bureaucracy and obtuseness can you add? 

Now that being said, as we have discussed in other videos, we do process a number of US Immigration cases each year through the US Embassy here in Thailand. For those who feel a little bit overwhelmed about the overall process, don't really understand how it works, and for those who are not yet necessarily married, it may not be a terrible idea before making any final decisions or sort of ascertaining what you think you want to do, it may not be a terrible idea to contact a legal professional in order to gain some insight and some guidance regarding what your options are and the best ways in which to proceed.