Transcript of the above video:

I kind of periodically like to do just a general kind of an update regarding US Immigration from Thailand. Something we are kind of noticing, we are noticing a lot here in the firm, there just seems to be a major uptick in so-called RFEs or Requests for Evidence. We are also seeing kind of an uptick with respect to issues involving the National Visa Center or NVC. 

Now a couple of things to bear in mind here, my perspective might be a little bit skewed because a year ago we were very much in the doldrums with respect to Immigration processing. COVID just had frozen up a lot, well COVID didn't, the Government's response to COVID froze up a lot of the system and we just weren't seeing things being processed particularly quickly. Things are starting to move a lot faster and it seems like there is a lot of activity going on. But RFEs were once for me, Requests for Evidence, they were pretty darned rare, it just wasn't something you saw very often. Then more and more this happened a lot under the last Administration especially the final two years of the last Administration and it really hasn't changed that much since the changeover to this new Administration. We just see a lot more Requests for Evidence than we used to see. 

Meanwhile, I have said this before and I will say it again, National Visa Center is a quagmire. I think it's the worst of all worlds. It's kind of like an almost digital Sovietized document collection apparatus designed to not really help. By this I mean you'll upload documentation frequently to NVC that is in perfectly good order, they will make some request and there won't even be really any good reason why. Another big issue I have with NVC, I've discussed this in other videos, they really shouldn't be adjudicating domicile. Domicile it is a very nuanced issue. Frankly it is something that Consular Officer should be dealing with; the US Embassies and Consulates abroad on a Case by case basis and yet NVC has taken this “one size fits all” attitude which again as I have noted it is an almost Soviet kind of situation because there's no real way through it. You provide the documentation that shows in my opinion pretty well clears up the issues of domicile and they just continuously say, "oh we want something else", or "this isn't sufficient" and it gets to the point where it is like, "Well, what do you want?" And I understand, domicile is a murky issue, it is nebulous; we have discussed this in other videos but just the overall system with NVC, it lacks many things to be desired, I'll put it that way. 

But long story short yeah, on the positive note with respect to US Immigration, things are speeding up. On a negative note unfortunately we are just seeing a lot more RFEs than I am used to seeing in a given year and we are also seeing more activity by NVC which quite frankly is not really helping and in my opinion is just kind of bogging down the overall process.