Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing US Immigration. We are specifically discussing the notion of being "Documentarily Qualified" by the National Visa Center.

What does this mean? Well, when you are dealing with I would call preliminary Consular processing at the National Visa Center, they generally ask for a number of documentation or a number of documents. They will also ask for various forms associated with one's case. You may need to deal with a DS form, a Department of State form, notably the DS260 and then you need to get all of that uploaded and then it is, I don't really love this about the National Visa Center, but in a way they basically pre-adjudicate the documentation and then they decide if the case is "documentarily qualified." That status then puts you into the queue to get an interview at your Embassy or Consulate. 

I am making this from the standpoint of dealing with Southeast Asia, so for example the Embassy here in Bangkok, or Phnom Penh or up in Vientiane, Laos so we deal with those Embassies quite frequently as well as Malaysia, Singapore and very occasionally Vietnam. Once it is documentarily qualified, oftentimes you are sitting around waiting for a little while you come up in the queue, you come up in line. In the aftermath of COVID-19 here in 2021, this has been something of a long wait and I have had a number of clients send me emails saying "what's going on?" Well, it does take a little bit of time. We are dealing with some backlog out here and also we are dealing with the facts on the ground where the Embassy may have to shut down for a little while and then they have to re-open and re-tool and get things going again. It is a fluid situation in a certain sense a certain sense but yeah the best you can do once you are “Documentarily Qualified” basically is just wait for your interview.