Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing fees associated with the K-3 Visa process. 

I did another video on this channel regarding the K-1 Visa process and I am making this because I get enquiries rather frequently and oftentimes they are just sort of one line enquiries where they just ask "what are your fees for doing a K-3 visa from Thailand?" and I get no other context. I am making this video because there has been a paradigm here in Thailand lo these past roughly 10 years that there is something like a given set of fees for doing for example a K-3 Visa or any visa for that matter and I think this video is warranted at this point because we have seen some rather fundamental changes in the overall process of getting a person to the United States from abroad and for this reason I am making this video as a cautionary video as well because there are a number unfortunately as I have stated in the other video, and I have stated at length, there are number of frankly fake lawyers and fake law firms for lack of a better term especially in the internet ecosystem that sort of surrounds Bangkok, surrounds Thailand, and for this reason I am making this video. There just are. Sometimes they just out and out call themselves lawyers. They are just fake and they call themselves lawyers. Sometimes they call themselves law firms. Sometimes they sort of couch themselves in more vague terminology with respect to administrative functions or something like this or I am the director of the firm but I have no legal credentials. "Well why are we talking to you about anything legal related? You are not even qualified to discuss it". So there is that side of things. 

The other thing is there is also this presumption that this is done on a fixed rate and that all cases just operate on a fixed rate basis and there is sort of a one-size-fits-all approach to setting fees with respect to the Visa process, in this case the K-3 Visa process. I am here to tell you that really isn't the case and it is especially not the case under the Trump Administration and the changes that have been made with respect to especially the administrative processing apparatus associated with the K-3 Visa. In the past, it was possible to some degree and I always was very ambivalent about the notion that there was sort of a flat rate for even routine cases because 1) it is difficult to define what a routine case is. In short I need to talk to you. If you are a petitioner and you are looking to bring over your spouse from the United States, I need to be on the phone with you or I need to converse with you in email or some sort of format so I can understand your circumstances. What is the reason for this?  It is not to jack up my fees. Most of the time I talk to somebody and it turns out "yeah you fit under our routine cost structure", but a lot of times there are things that sometimes people think are important which aren't necessarily important. Sometimes there are things in their case which people think are no big deal which are in fact of very big deal. So for example, criminal history, prior Immigration history, this can have a tremendous impact on the Immigration process and somebody that is just taking your money and sort of going through the motions, that is somebody you need to look with suspicion on. You need to operate with an overabundance of caution. Somebody that just says before they have even met you, talked to you, spoken to you, corresponded with you, learned any information about your case, somebody that just says "oh it is going to be this amount of money or it is going to be this amount of money over this amount of time" that should be somebody you should be very careful in dealing with. First of all, pursuant to what is called 8 CFR 292.1, only a licenced American attorney is entitled to charge fees in association with the processing of cases, in this case a K-3 case, which has to start processing through the US anyway. Only someone who is a licensed Attorney is going to be able to charge fees for that. So that is first off. If you deal with somebody that isn't a licensed Attorney, in my opinion they are committing fraud at least and depending on the circumstances of their particular operation, they may even be doing something which arises to the level of criminality, for example of human trafficking. Again it is going to depend on circumstances but that is what we are dealing with here. So again, 8 CFR 292.1 delineates that Attorneys need to be the ones that are processing these cases if they are being compensated for it.

There are also ethical considerations and Attorneys are held to a certain ethical code and part of that ethical code is not being able to just quote fees without having some sort of context as to what the case looks like. Unforeseen facts can arise. Circumstances can arise which were unforeseen that may change the posture of a case but at the outset if you are dealing with somebody who is not even talking to you before they are quoting you their fee, you need to be very, very, very cautious about dealing with somebody like that. 

Now again, different attorneys do things differently and there may be a set of circumstances where Attorneys have kind of a routine fee schedule. We certainly have sort of a general rough routine fee outline that we can provide but I need to talk to people first. I need to be in correspondence with my perspective clients in order to ascertain the details of their case because failure to do so, I could be taking on a case that might not even be eligible to be approved in the first place. That is another key concern here. Somebody who is telling you "oh just a flat rate" and they are not even talking to you, they are not even corresponding with you, again they may be taking your case and putting the paperwork through with full knowledge that you may never even see it approved whereas if you are dealing with a professional that knows what they are doing, they may say look under the circumstances you are not even eligible for this.  There is no point in you even trying and going through the consternation of paying out the fees associated with even processing this case.

Again I bring this up because I see a lot of people that have this sort of paradigm that it is just this fixed rate. These are cases. These are legal proceedings that are operating through two different Cabinet departments of the United States Government. It operates under the legal and the plenary powers of the United States Government. This is complex stuff and dealing with somebody who doesn't have any qualifications and is just quoting you some fixed rate fee without ever even ascertaining your details, that is someone you really need to be dealing with an extreme over abundance of caution.