Transcript of the above video: 

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing the issue of well Visa delays. As I have discussed in another video, back toward the beginning of this year, Trump announced his “Visa ban’ on Immigrant Visas. That ban then turned into a pause because they are assessing the framework by which they adjudicate matters pertaining to Public Charge i.e. whether or not somebody will go on welfare in the United States. I've made a number of videos on this. We just started seeing interviews back at the Embassy and I have had problems in the cases that have all popped up and gone to interview; again we are liaising with the Embassy to try and get that stuff sorted out. But long story short, they are using this, I got one case thrown over into admin. processing, and by the way this thing had been through a waiver, I mean it's years in the making for that case and it culminates with them throwing it into Administrative Processing with no particular reason that I can see from doing that. It's been in Administrative Processing; it's gone through the waiver process. Period. End of discussion. 

That said, it is a fortunately a hallmark of this President really, this Administration, it's not this Administration, but in Trump's first term and in this term, I will say yes, and I was vocal about the fact that the American Border was wide open and, in many ways, America was effectively invaded. And I do understand the need to round up the illegals who came in and deport them; I get that as well. I'm one of the few immigration lawyers you'll probably ever hear from that feels that way, probably due to the nature of the way that I've always practiced Immigration Law, which is from out here, and I am always dealing with people that are going through the system legally; they're lining up to get in line to go deal with this stuff. But my biggest problem with this Administration in terms of Immigration Policy is they constantly go after legal immigrants and make their lives more difficult for what I can only really say is no particular reason. Now I know the overall consensus amongst Americans who are very angry about the immigration situation - and I don't blame them - but we have a rule of law, we do have laws in place and if we don't and if we're just going to make it up as we go, and I do have to say I've seen a lot of that happening in this Administration as well as a lot of that happening seemingly over here in Thailand from time to time too, it's not good, because what happens over time is you just end up with a system that doesn't work at all. 

The best thing Trump could do, frankly while he's still got in my opinion, he has had ample opportunity. The first half of the first term, the first half of this term, presuming that especially in the Lower House in America, the Republicans probably don't win, and I think, not to get too political, but I think that's not an unreasonable thing to presume at this point in the proceedings, that said there's months to go. But I mean he's had the opportunity to change the Immigration Laws and instead what happens is they go in and use all kinds of chicanery and manipulation to mess with the system that is already on the books. Again it's like this whole "visa pause" because we are “retooling the public charge analysis”. Well it just looks like an excuse to not issue visas, and at the end of the day, there is a legal mandate to process cases that have been paid for and to deal with people per U.S. law not just sort of makeup some vague reason for why they don't want to continue to do things the way that they should be doing them. And again - I do have issues with some of the stuff with ICE - but I have no problems with the notion of immigration enforcement in a general sense; I don't. But we're talking about people who are already in the system wanting to do it correctly.  

I thought of making this video after reading a recent article from POLITICO, politico.com: A slow down in US Visa processing is wreaking havoc on foreign doctors' lives. Now again, I know that there are a lot of people out there that are just like, "look, more jobs for Americans; America first"; I get all that. I really, really do. But we do have shortages of certain things. One of the most disconcerting things I ever saw is I watched my brother graduate with an Engineering Bachelor’s from University of Texas at Austin, and they did the graduation of all the Engineering students for that year. It was the Bachelor's Degree folks, the Master's Degree folks, and the PhDs. Nearly all the Bachelor's Degree people were what you would immediately identify as sort of what you would think of as American. You got up into the Master's Programs and it was a lot of Asians, South Asians - and I'm not saying, they could have all been American, whatever - but by the time you got to PhD it was almost all foreign people is the point I am trying to make. And my brother and I were talking about it at the time and he said, well a lot of these people, they can continue to get student visas, but they can't get a Visa that will allow him to stay in America to work with the Degrees that were granted by our Universities. We make PhDs and then expel them? But then at the same time leave the Border open for a bunch of untrained, unskilled people to just come pouring in? Bad policy. And the point I'm trying to make here is that most of the legal immigration has a reason behind it. Of course family-based immigration is what it is, but employment-based immigration like yes, America could probably use more doctors; it's probably not a bad thing to have more doctors. 

That said, quoting directly: "The Trump Administration is slow-walking Visa renewals for foreign doctors in the United States from the 39 countries from which the President has banned visitors." Quoting further: "President Donald Trump says people from the countries are national security threats, but the Visa pause is forcing physicians who've lived in the U.S. for years to stop working and exacerbating staffing shortages that are a long-standing headache for Hospital administrators, more than a dozen foreign doctors told POLITICO." Again, completely agreed with the notion of Tom Holman coming in there. Shut down the Border, go after the traffickers, great. Why are we going after a bunch of doctors and putting more strain on our medical infrastructure in the United States? For what purpose by the way? These people have been seemingly vetted; presumably they've been vetted, so are they some threat to America? Is a pulmonary specialist not something we would want in the United States? I don't get it. Quoting further: "The doctors, from countries like Nigeria, Venezuela and Cuba, often work in rural and undeserved areas, places where American doctors are in short supply. But those positions, numbering in the thousands, are finding themselves with no way to remain because U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services has withheld Visa renewals." And this comes down to the problem. And this is what we're seeing with the Visa Pause out here. It's just, "ehh, we're not going to do it", even though the law says this is how it works. No! And we're not going to adjudicate on a case-by-case basis. No, we're just going to make a blanket finding that we just don't feel like it." This is my problem. It's just a complete ignoring of the underlying laws, ignoring the Administrative Regulations and Executive Orders that have pertained to this and just taking the position of "ehh, we're just going to shrug it off! We're just not going to process it."

Again, if there was a coherent statement, Executive Order by the President that said: “for the purposes of National Security were not issuing any new visas for X number of days’, and it was stated "Why" I'd say all right. But all of this is being done through the manipulation, to borrow a phrase from Steve Banner, “through the manipulation of the administrative state in order to undermine its original function”. This will have tremendous negative ramifications in the long term. By the way, with each passing day, the bureaucracy in America reminds me more and more of the Soviet Union. Truly. Everything you read about it where nothing ever makes sense. There's a great scene - I might use it as a thumbnail if I can find it - from the movie Citizen X; Donald Sutherland plays this Colonel and it's at the end of the Soviet era so he ends up a General in the Russian Army by the end of the movie - but there's this great scene where he says, how did he put it, “the telltale sign” - I'm paraphrasing – “the telltale sign of a good bureaucracy is it gives no one special treatment; it just thwarts everyone, it forestalls everyone, it's just a brick wall." Well that's not what America was founded on, and if we continue doing this stuff, we're just going to end up with a system that doesn't work for anybody in any way.