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ResourcesVisa & Immigration LawUS Immigration LawIs Administrative Processing Abused in the US Visa Process?

Is Administrative Processing Abused in the US Visa Process?

Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing US Immigration and specifically the issue of what is called Administrative Processing

The thing to take away from this video, first what is Administrative Processing? In Consular processing and that is when a visa application is moving through a US Embassy or US Consulate outside the United States, there are various labels for where a case is at within the process; what I think of as sort of the assembly line if you will of the Visa being ultimately issued. The thing to take away from this video is I have done some videos on Administrative Processing in the past. We deal with Administrative Processing rather directly with respect to visa applications especially here at the US Embassy in Bangkok, Thailand but also cases processing through the US Embassy in Phnom Penh, Cambodia as well as Vientiane, Laos. We also deal with matters out of Singapore, and Vietnam occasionally as well as Yangon, Myanmar. So we have dealt with this in rather hands on manner.

I have seen some things here recently with respect to the US Immigration process and yes I will say and we have done videos on the so-called "invisible wall", that this current Administration has been for lack of a better term erecting; that is a euphemism that is being used mostly by Immigration practitioners with respect to just the sort of increasingly obtuse bureaucracy associated with US Immigration that has come about especially under this Trump Administration. While I will say I have seen a fair bit of this stuff or what could be attributed to maybe, I hesitate to use bad faith as a word, but perhaps redundancies in the bureaucracy with dealing with processing in some of these cases. There is a notion out there that Administrative Processing is coming up with more frequency and could even be construed as being abused by the system. It has been my experience in the past roughly year-and-a-half, Administrative Processing in and of itself in my opinion has not particularly been abused. We haven't seen it as a practical matter being occurring in any increasing frequency. This could be due to the fact that the process is becoming more streamlined due to the digitization of certain aspects of the process whereas once we would see things stuck in Administrative processing for document purposes; basically the need to provide further documentation. We are not seeing that as quite as often.

That being stated Administrative processing can be very frustrating. In certain circumstances it could be described as a sort of "black hole" wherein documentation falls off into this Administrative Processing category and it is very difficult to figure out exactly what is going on with respect to that. That being said, here in the region I haven't seen any spike particularly; I should say spike past what we are usually dealing with respect to Administrative processing but yeah I think it is always an issue that is out there, especially in Consular processing, avoidance of Administrative processing or trying to go ahead and streamline or facilitate that case back out of Administrative processing, that is always an issue in Consular processing but right now I can't say that I see it is any more major of a factor in the process than it has been in the past.  That being said never say never. It may become a problem here in the future but frankly based on what I am seeing right now I don't particularly foresee that at least with respect to the post of we deal with on a regular basis.