Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing US Visas from Thailand and specifically a number of backlogs that we are seeing at the National Visa Center.

I have had a lot of people asking me about this recently. I have done another video contemporaneously with this one where we discuss the situation with interviews here at the Embassy. Most people, once they get what is called "documentarily qualified" in Immigrant cases or they get notice from National Visa Center that they are moving the case from the NVC over to the Embassy, they immediately think that "Okay now we can start dealing with the Embassy." Well, even at the best of times that is not necessarily true. It takes a minute for the NVC to move the case from their facility and get it out here; it is like sending it by FedEx if you will although it goes by the courier service through the US Embassy system. That is going to take a minute and under normal circumstances, usually my experience has been about 2 or 3 weeks from the time NVC in a K-1 for example, says “hey we are moving that case over.” It takes some 2 or 3 weeks; it gets over here and then we deal with interview stuff and get that all set up. 

In Immigrant cases we get the appointment and then they move the case. If your case is "documentarily qualified" and it is going to the Embassy in Thailand, it is moving slow. I know a lot of people that have contacted me a lot and they have said "hey we are DQ. What is going on?" Well, there is a major backlog. There is a queue of cases and on top of that in response to this third wave of COVID, we have seen a lot of cases postponed for interview. We have seen them tell us that they have had to make certain arrangements with respect to the COVID response, basically maybe less people are operating in the office. 

Long story short, things are moving more slowly. We are definitely seeing cases move but they are not moving at the pace that people perceive that they should be moving at and this is based on they go on these websites like Visa Journey and they say "well this guy got his case moved over from NVC in a week and a half!" Well yes, that was in April of 2018 when we didn't have all these issues that we have right now. The timing of at what point in time these cases move around, has a lot to do with how they process. Cases moving in 2020 and 2021 are completely different from what was happening in 2018 and 2019 notwithstanding the fact that overall, the process is basically the same, a bunch of intervening factors came in and have changed timelines and things and look the system is not in great shape at the moment. I do understand people's frustration. I understand it completely. Those folks who contact us especially our clients and things, we are doing the best that we can. We are trying to keep things moving but it is a slow process. It is a situation where you will have to bear with us too. We are trying to deal with it as fast as we can but things are not moving at the pace that they normally move at and even then it wasn't an instantaneous process. So right now, even those cases K-3s, IR-1s, CR-1s that are going through just expect it is going to take a little bit more time than what you may be reading about on the internet as far as how long it "should" be taking.