Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing NVC. That is the National Visa Center and the 221g refusal. We have done a number of videos on this channel including a video contemporaneously with this one discussing 221g in the context of both the K-1 and the IR-1 and CR-1 Visa.

For purposes of this video, just suffice it to say at 221g is a refusal pending further documentation. We generally see these after an interview at the US Embassy or Consulate abroad. I am talking about this generally in the context of the US Embassy here in Thailand although we do deal with these cases regionally and it could be extrapolated to the wider world if you will.

Long story short, yes the 221g, we generally deal with them here in Bangkok and in K Visa cases, the K-1 or the K-3, my opinion is you do see a little bit more 221g refusals because they don't front load some of the documentation intake in the same way that they do through the National Visa Center. Now this is not to say that this is necessarily a bad thing. I personally, and I know practitioner counterparts of mine in the United States would cringe at me saying this, but I am a little more cavalier about 221gs then they are because I deal with them through this post rather frequently and we are blocks away from the Embassy as opposed to half a world away; so it is just a little bit more streamlined when we are dealing with 221gs and Immigration Attorneys stateside really want to avoid it. I understand and different Embassies do things differently. Frankly Bangkok is very efficient in dealing with 221g follow up. 

The reason for this video though is yeah you do see a little bit more 221g in these K cases. That said K-3s, and we have discussed this at length are subject to what is called Administrative Closure where the underlying Immigrant Spouse Visa petition can be adjudicated. Post COVID we are seeing a little bit more K-3 activity then we once did but long story short ,it is not as frequently done as the K-1 and for this reason we don't usually see K-3s come through here and therefore see this 221g disparity. 

But the reason for this video is I think you could argue that there may be a little bit more 221g issuance in a K-3 case that doesn't get Administratively Closed because there is less front end intake of documentation through the National Visa Center because the National Visa Center just acts as a clearing house. They are sort of a post office; they just get that case they forward it to the Embassy and that is that. That is a very different thing than the process that is undertaken by National Visa Center in cases involving Immigrant Spouse Visa because in those cases, essentially NVC does all the intake and in a way they pre-adjudicate which I really find annoying. They don't really have the right to do that but they do kind of pre-adjudicate the documentation before sending it on to an Embassy or Consulate abroad.