Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are asking the question should the CR-1 Visa process as well as the IR-1 Visa process, and for purposes of this video we are talking about spouses of American citizens and lawful permanent residents trying to go to the United States, should it be reformed?

Going back to the beginning of the Trump Administration, there was serious talk about consolidating certain aspects of the Department of Homeland Security with the Department of State. One thing that, it never came to pass, nothing really ever came of it, but one thing that was discussed at the time was the possibility of essentially consolidating the Immigration process where basically all of it occurred at Embassies abroad. The thinking at the time was DHS personnel would be posted inside of Embassies and be doing things like the initial petition processing and then it would be streamlined to deal with the, because there is a Department of State function where they have to do some fact finding with respect to the applicant as opposed to the petitioner, but not getting too deep into the details, but long story short, it was a proposal that may have seen Immigrant Spousal Visas processed entirely abroad, or a larger segment of it being done outside of the United States.  

Again nothing ever came of it but it does beg the question in my mind, is it really time for some serious reform for like Immigrant Spouse Visas, CR-1 and IR-1 Visas. As the process sits right now especially post COVID and there are some signs of positive developments that play. Serious action being taken by the Government to reduce backlogs that was recently announced that is definitely a good thing, but with respect to processing of cases wholly abroad or just reforming the process, I could think of a number of suggestions. I mean one I think there is a good argument to be made that especially now, the way that the National Visa Center deals with these cases which I don't love, in fact I am not a big fan of the way the National Visa Center does much of anything, but it really begs the question when you are going through this, what is even the point of Department of Homeland Security's involvement? This could all be done via the National Visa Center. Why isn’t it just consolidated and then the case just moved to an Embassy here? I mean I know the process is what it is. It has been that way since the Eisenhower Administration. You file a petition, that petition if approved is then forwarded to Department of State for further action with respect to Visa issuance but isn’t time we reform this antiquated system and maybe consolidate it where it all just happens in one place. We minimize and mitigate as many redundancies as possible and get this done as efficiently as we possibly can.