Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are asking the question, "What is a normal processing time for a K-1, CR-1, K-3 or IR-1 Visa petition?" What are we talking about here specifically? We are talking about petition processing at Department Homeland Security, specifically United States Citizenship and Immigration Service. So for those who are unaware, for all of the aforementioned Visa categories that is primarily what we handle here in this office; a lot of family based Immigration for fiancé’s and spouses or children and stepchildren of United States citizens. We handle a lot of that here and we process a great number of those cases through the US Embassy here in Bangkok as well.

The question posed though is what is sort of a normal processing time parameter associated with these petitions? You know, it has been a source of great consternation in sort of my practice with regard to Immigration that USCIS even puts out these sort of processing time estimates and things, because all it really does, it creates, in my opinion, it creates a lot of false sense of there being a set time line and it also creates in many ways a false sense of what ought to be what is the correct processing time. At the end of the day, I have got to be honest with you, especially now where I think our Immigration System is largely broken and it is in desperate need of reform and overhaul, setting that aside, there doesn't seem to be a lot of rhyme or reason with regard to how some of these cases process.  Every once in a while I get a wild card that we will throw in the hopper and then boom it just comes right back. That's not very common I will admit. Covid my gosh, we just saw a total freeze of the overall process and quite honestly it has been thawing but I don't think it's safe to argue that we are back to status quo ante in terms of processing times prior to COVID. 

A lot of people ask me about this and look, I am not going to give anybody a hard and fast rule. Again there are certain parameters, depending on the underlying petition you are processing, again you are dealing with an I-130 in the case of the CR-1 and the IR-1 Visa, I-129F in terms of the K-1 or the K-3 supplemental. Those are different lines if you will for petition adjudication so again they are going to differ just internally from the fact that they are not processing through the same pipeline if you will. 

Meanwhile again one case will seem to come out very quickly, another case will take forever; there doesn't seem to be a lot of rhyme or reason. There does come a certain point though where after a certain period of time, you have to start asking yourself well do we need to go ahead and perhaps look at doing something like a Writ of Mandamus. I made another video contemporaneously with this one where I discussed Writs of Mandamus and sort of what I think of them. I am looking at that from sort of an outsider's perspective because it's not something I deal with on a regular basis because quite honestly, I am in a unique position being abroad and dealing primarily with Consular Processing. Leaving that aside, the answer to the question is rather than looking at it as like a set period of time which is normal, I kind of look at it as like a banded thing. If it comes out before X date, "wow that came out really fast!" and if it comes out after a certain period of time it's like "wow that one went slow!" There is a sweet spot in there. And that said a good Immigration Attorney in my opinion, will have kind of a feel for "hey at a certain point the clients are saying it's been X amount of time, I've been waiting around here forever, what do you think?" And oftentimes it will get to a point where it becomes just in my opinion completely unreasonable, or it's like "hey we might need to look at taking some different steps to handle this." That said, again it's going to be driven by the underlying facts in the giving case as well as the circumstances in a particular case, so not to sound like a broken record but the facts are going to drive the analysis as to whether or not a petition is taking too long process.