Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing the K-1 Visa process. Quite honestly this is almost an opinion video but man the level of redundancy in the K-1 Visa process, it is just getting ridiculous at this point. I really think Comprehensive Immigration Reform is absolutely necessary to get the Immigration System back on track, but man the redundancy is just crazy.

I mean stuff we are dealing with now, for example the US Embassy here in Bangkok is now asking for folks to show their original divorce decrees associated with petitioner's prior divorce in a K-1 Visa adjudication. Why this is required is absolutely baffling to me because Department of Homeland Security is in charge of that type of adjudication. I have never seen the Embassy out here or any Embassy in this region ask for proof, not just proof of divorce in the form of a copy, but an actual original or originally certified divorce decree. This is not the easiest thing in the world to get and I really do not understand why it is being requested and that's where it gets into the redundancy because Department of Homeland Security specifically USCIS, is tasked with making those adjudications. They get into issues associated with petitioner's marital status; that is their mandate. Department of State doesn't have that mandate, and yes Immigration Officers have the discretion to look at the whole case, I get all of that. The Doctrine of Consular Absolutism, or Non-reviewability, we all understand that and there is an element of that although not as big an element of that in the Immigrant Visa unit I should say, there is not as big an element of that as it is in the Non-Immigrant Visa unit but it is still there. Consular Officers need to make factual determinations, I get that. But in the case of petitioner divorce decrees, that has already been adjudicated by USCIS, just like a billion other things have already been dealt with by Department of Homeland Security that then you refile again when you are dealing with the back end of the process; it is very redundant. 

I think it is pretty much high time, they kind of talked about this when Tillerson was Secretary of State of somehow, and I know that there are sort of bureaucratic wars that happen when they discuss these things, but they were talking about sort of amalgamating both DHS or DOS and kind of putting them together. That really didn't go anywhere I think the only way to do this is under comprehensive Immigration reform through Congress and basically delineating, my opinion, family based visas, especially family-based visas for American citizens, should be entirely adjudicated abroad if they are coming in from abroad, and then just either take out the Department of Homeland Security function or take out the DOS redundancy, but whatever you do I mean you are basically doing everything twice in the process at this point and they are asking for stuff now in different parts of the process where they really don't have a mandate to do that. Again I am not being critical of the Department of State, they may have their reasons for this, I don't know why, maybe an anti-fraud sort of prevention thing, but long story short it is redundant.