Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing 221g documentation. For those who are unaware, a 221g is generally issued after a visa interview. It is generally issued by an American Consular Officers who is a member of the US State Department at a US Embassy or Consulate abroad. Essentially it is a refusal, but under 221g when we often see this as a practical matter, it is a refusal pending further documentation. They basically say "hey, look your case is being refused because we want this other document or we want further clarification on something." Generally speaking, if you remedy the deficiency or clarify whatever the issue is, they will generally then turn around and issue the Visa.

I know a lot of American Immigration practitioners they kind of give me a hard time because I talk about 221gs very cavalierly compared to what they do because they are on the other side of the world and they are handling practices that are not as regionally based as we are where we are dealing primarily with Thailand but also Cambodia, Laos, a little bit in Vietnam, a little bit down in Singapore and the Philippines but for the most part here on the Southeast Asia land mass and especially Thailand specifically. To me a 221g, the Embassy is a just few blocks away. I can't just run in there and deal with it but we can deal with it pretty straightforwardly. In the United States a 221g can really cause a lot of delay. For us, oftentimes if we get a 221g we usually are able to remedy it within a few days. 

That being said, the reason for this video is they have actually changed the format. I am going to go ahead and throw this up on screen. This is the old form for the 221g and you can see it is sort of a checklist. They will have boxes there and you can see where we have redacted this so it doesn't show anyone's name or any specific information but as you can see there is this checklist and it is all the things that they may want, they may not have gotten, they may need another translation of etc., etc. They seem to have replaced this. This seems to be something new; we have only seen this since post COVID. I don't know if they were doing this during COVID; we didn't deal with a lot of 221gs in 2020 because we didn't deal with a lot of case processing in 2020 because everything was mostly shut down. I am going to go ahead and throw up this one though, the new one, and as you can see it does not have the checkbox situation. This is in a template. Just to quote it, it says: "The office regrets to inform you it is unable to issue a visa to you at this time per section 221g of the Immigration Nationality Act which prohibits the issuance of a visa to anyone whose application does not comply with the provisions of the Act or regulations issued pursuant thereto. Your case is pending and further consideration will be given to your visa application after you obtain and present the documents listed below:" 

Now I think they are going to enter it in rather than just tick a box. I understand that because 221gs are not necessarily a cookie cutter. It is not just always a matter of "Oh, you forgot your birth certificate or something". Sometimes, especially with issues like domicile, it can be really squishy, it can have a lot of nuance to the analysis of dealing with it; oftentimes, also as you will see, this particular one was issued associated with an Affidavit of Support. It is just interesting that they have changed this, in my opinion to allow for a little bit more flexibility from their officers to issue these 221g documents more tailored to a case. Now obviously, when you are processing a US Visa case you don't want to get one of these but even the best cases, even the most documented cases, sometimes get a 221g. It just happens sometimes and you have to deal with it. 

So we certainly assist with 221g follow up. We certainly assist our clients who have been dealing with this since the beginning of the process in getting 221gs rectified and hopefully getting their Visa issued and folks on their way to the United States.