Transcript of the above video: 

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing US Marriage Visas, categories for example the K-3 Marriage Visa as well as the IR-1 or the CR-1 Immigrant Spouse Visas. We are talking to the underlying petition here. Now what is that?

Well when you file a case to get a visa for a loved one to bring them back of the United States, you have to initially file a petition with the Department of Homeland Security’s United States Citizenship and Immigration Service. That petition is then adjudicated. Now presuming you get an approval, which isn't a foregone conclusion - you may get a Request for Evidence, a Notice of Intention to Deny - it may even possibly be denied depending on the facts in the underlying case. But that said, in the circumstances where you get an approval and then you move that case over to the National Visa Center and start processing through National Visa Center and eventually the Embassy. What happens if the underlying petition were to expire? Well they have the authority to just reauthorize it. And I get people that kind of freak out about this, the notion that if we don't move the case along fast enough, the petition, something may happen to it.

The fact of the matter is look National Visa Center is difficult to deal with on the best of days and then on top of that the backlogs at the US Embassy and things like that here, it takes some time the second half of an Immigrant Spouse Visa case or even a K-3 Visa case. Now as we have discussed in other videos, due to what's called the Doctrine of Administrative Closure, K-3 Visas may get actually just cancelled effectively by the National Visa Center if the underlying Immigrant Spouse Visa petition was timely in hitting the National Visa Center; I've talked about that in a number of other videos. So in terms of the K-3, I guess it's possible to see the petition validity revoked and not reauthorized and you are sort of compelled then to deal with the Immigrant Spouse Visa process. 

But that said, generally speaking if you are keeping your case moving through the system, Consular Officers at Embassies and Consulates abroad have pocket authority to reauthorize petitions for those cases that are moving through the system, they're just not moving through as fast as perhaps one would like.