Transcript of the above video: 

For those who know this channel, they know that we are based here in Bangkok as I just said, and we process a number of Fiancé(e) visas every year; we process a rather large number of K-1 Fiancé(e) Visas every year. I would say in a given year I have a few K-1 Fiancé cases that will go through the US Embassy in Phnom Penh -  not a huge amount, but occasionally we process those - and sometimes we even process where it is a Khmer woman, usually a woman, who is living in Thailand oftentimes because she is working here and then processing a K-1 back to the United States. Sometimes we will do a Cambodian processing through the US Embassy, Bangkok or where they are looking to go back to Phnom Penh to process out of there, but they are presently physically present for whatever reason in Thailand. 

Now for those that are familiar with the channel, I have been doing updates on the border conflict between Thailand and Cambodia; that has broken out into some level of violence and obviously that is not a good thing. We are all hoping that we see some sort of ceasefire in that situation and it gets resolved and we can all move on down the road peacefully. 

That being said, the reason for the video is comparing the process between the two countries; how is it different? Well it really is fundamentally; there is a lot of difference on the Consular processing side. Cambodia much like Vietnam for that matter is considered what is called a high-fraud post, whereas Thailand is not. Thailand's relationship with the United States being the US's oldest ally in Asia - oftentimes people kind of overlook that - but it is. The relationship between Thailand and the US, including the US-Thai Treaty of Amity, its defense relationships and things, on top of the fact that this post is not considered a high - fraud post, in my opinion colours the complexion if you will of Consular processing in Thailand compared to Cambodia. It is arguably more efficient to process through Thailand if you are processing a K-1 for a Thai national or even through this Embassy here, and it might be a Khmer, it might be a Cambodian passport holder, depending on their circumstances, they might be able to undertake Consular processing here because the Embassy will take Consular jurisdiction over the case. That will greatly depend on the underlying facts in the case including that person's Visa status, work authorization status here in Thailand, that will factor into the analysis if this Embassy will even process that case. But generally speaking, cases that move through the US Consulate here in Bangkok for Fiancé(e) Visas, tend to move more smoothly in my opinion than over in Phnom Penh. On top of that, we see a number of cases that get denied out of Phnom Penh and then you have to deal with basically blocking the revocation of the underlying petition in order to move it through, or in a lot of cases, I talked to folks and again it depends on their situation, it may behoove them to figure out a jurisdiction in which to get married because marriage in Cambodia to a Cambodian national to be a bit of an onerous undertaking, again depending on the facts of a case. It may behoove them to get married in a third country jurisdiction before seeking Immigration benefits or even undertaking what is called a proxy marriage, as we have discussed in other videos, before filing an I-130 for Marriage Visa benefits, it may be better to do that rather than go through the K-1 process.  Again, all of this will be driven by the facts in the underlying case. 

The point of this video is to understand that yeah, processing a K-1 through the US Embassy, Bangkok is qualitatively a different undertaking than processing a similar case through the US Embassy in Phnom Penh.