Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing remote interviews in the context of Tourist, K-1, that's Fiancé Visas and Marriage Visas; that could be a K-3, CR-1 or IR-1 Marriage Visa in most cases involving the spouse of a US citizen or lawful permanent resident as well as the fiancée of a US citizen and then Tourist Visas, we all know what that's all about. 

This is kind of a little bit of opinion piece from me in the sense that, first of all let me go ahead and quote. This was an update on state.gov, Briefings of Foreign Press Centers, Update on Visa Services and it was kind of a little podcast. There was pretty interesting stuff in there but I just I did another video directly on this but quoting:  "Finally, I'll mention staffing. The Department is actively engaged in increasing the number of Consular Officers who are overseas adjudicating visas. We have doubled Consular Officer hiring this year from last year and we have a growing team of experienced adjudicators who are supporting high-demand posts by remotely adjudicating visa cases." That's key, that "remotely adjudicating visa cases." I've never seen that language in anything the State Department has talked about up until I read this and did that prior video. Quoting further: "and that let's posts overseas have more time to interview applicants who must come in in-person." So what happens with all of this? Well first, I kind of doubt the Immigrant Visa units are going to be doing remote interviews anytime soon. I mean even if this policy rolls out, I doubt we are going to see it in the Immigrant Visa, Fiancés, Marriage Visas possibly, I'll say possibly I don't know, this is speculation on a certain level. Meanwhile Tourist Visas, yeah I think we could possibly see sort of Zoom interviews, Skype interviews, whatever you want to call it just video chat interview taking place in a Tourist Visa context pretty quickly actually. And I get the impression that maybe something the Department of State is kind of keen to do for a lot of different reasons but most notably we have got a heck of a backlog in the Tourist Visa Section, in the Non-Immigrant Visa Section at the Embassy and that has tremendous ramifications. To the State Department's credit they don't want that. I know they don't want that. They have priorities and they have a mandate. They need to process cases so I could definitely see it in a Non-immigrant Visa setting.

The question is, is it possible we would ever see it in the Immigrant Visa section? My gut tells me probably not anytime soon but it's not outside the realm of possibility it could one day happen but again there's a fraud prevention unit element. I actually have on a personal level, I kind of have a problem especially in an immigrant, immigrant Visa applications are covered under a different section of the Immigration and Nationality Act, the INA and the Consular officers, I have got certain issues with what NVC does now, the National Visa Center does now. I think there are certain functions most notably adjudication of domicile that really have to be dealt with by an in-person Consular officer. And another thing I don't really love about this overall trend is in the past, and I have personally done this, there was a time when you deal with Consular officers generally they had sort of hours when they would deal with matters especially matters pertaining to what's called 221g Request for Further Documentation where you could actually deal with them one to one and sort of explain your situation and that Officer is supposed to make nuanced adjudications based on the facts in the underlying case. Look not every case is going to be the same, it's not cookie cutter. I do understand there becomes a mindset, I hate to call it a bureaucratic mindset exactly, but what other word is there really for it, but things can become routine and when you are used to dealing with very similar circumstances happening routinely, I get that you kind of get into a feedback loop but the function of a Consular Officer is to deal with the non-routine cases, the exigent circumstances, and make a determination. Quite frankly it is why they are granted so much power under the Doctrine of Consular Absolutism or Consular Non-Reviewability, Consular Officers really don't have any reviewability on their fact-finding functions. For that reason I really think we need to hesitate especially in an Immigrant Visa context and I think there are arguments to be made why we should maybe take a step back and take a deep breath even in a Non-Immigrant Visa context that there is something to be said for in-person interviews. But that being said, there are a lot of frivolous cases that do arise in the Non-Immigrant Visa unit that you don't see that volume in an immigrant Visa context. So could we one day see Tourist Visas be video interviewed while we still see in-person interviews for things like Fiancée and Marriage Visa categories? I think it's definitely a possibility.