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ResourcesVisa & Immigration LawUS Immigration LawWhat Are Your Fees for a K1 Visa from Thailand?

What Are Your Fees for a K1 Visa from Thailand?

Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing the K-1 Visa. We are specifically discussing the K-1 Visa process from Thailand.  

I get a lot of inquiries that are asking for our fees and I want to be clear. I have no problem giving out information regarding our fees but I get a lot of emails from people that just send me an email without any further elaboration. They just send me an email that says: "What is the cost of doing a Fiance Visa from Thailand. Send me a copy of your fees." Well I need further elaboration on your situation to be able to send out information regarding our fees. 

This is a real problem of the paradigm that has existed out here in Thailand with respect to US Immigration for a number of years. To one degree or another I had to work within it for a long time. In the Trump Administration and probably in the post Trump Administration, the changes to a lot of the Immigration Process I think some of them if we had for example in this upcoming election, if presumably the presumptive nominee Biden was to become the new president in an election against Trump, we would probably see some fairly fundamental changes to the Immigration process as it has been operating during the Trump Administration. Obviously if we see Trump re-elected, I don't think we will see any changes for at least the next 5 years roughly. So the point I am trying to make is in the past the US Immigration process was a great deal more predictable in routine cases than it has been in recent months and years. Especially with the new Public Charge Rule coming into effect which is just having a radical impact on analysis of eligibility for Immigration benefits etc. as well as different regulatory changes to the forms associated with the K-1 Visa process especially in cases involving those petitioners who have prior criminal activity.  It is having an impact on the overall process. For this reason, it is changing the way that we quote fees. One case may not have the same fee quotation as another case. Cases are different. They are unique.  Now again in the past to some extent there was a relative uniformity across cases where cases kind of processed in relatively the same manner. I think post Coronavirus and during the Trump Administration even in the aftermath of the Trump Administration and the Coronavirus, I think we are definitely going to see an overall different complexion to the K-1 Visa process and I think that this change in complexion is going to have serious implications for K-1 visas processed out of Thailand.  I think that that is definitely a high likelihood that we are going to see major change.

So, in my opinion there are a lot of fake lawyers out there and fake law firms and unfortunately Bangkok is home and the and the internet ecosystem in which the Bangkok legal community has to operate, we have to deal with just outright frauds; they are just out there. One telltale sign of dealing with somebody that is not particularly either competent or reputable; now I want to be clear because different attorneys do things differently, but I think any given attorney is going to want to at least have some idea of the context of a case. For example a K-1 Visa case, they are going to want to have some context with respect to the petitioner and the beneficiary, their situations, their criminal history if any, their Immigration history if any, their overall work situation, their financial situation. An attorney is going to need to have this information before they can provide estimates or quotations regarding the fees associated with processing a K-1 Visa.  I think one watching this video should look with a great deal of suspicion perhaps, definitely an abundance of caution when looking at a service provider that is saying "oh we can provide it for this rate across the board and in this sort of set of increments or under these circumstance. We can just provide a fixed fee without ever even talking to you." They are there already quoting you. That is something to be very careful with. Some licensed attorneys, and to be clear, pursuant 8 CFR 292.1 the Federal Law just cited 8 CFR 292.1, only an Attorney is entitled to charge fees with respect to US Immigration. So anybody else that is operating in this realm that is not an Attorney, first of all they are operating illegally. They are in violation of Federal Law.  Depending on how they are operating, there is some argument I think to be made that they are perhaps are engaged in something even beyond the unlicenced practice of Law, even to the point of  possibly being engaged in perhaps human trafficking depending on the factual circumstances surrounding that operation. 

The thing to take away from this video is, again I can't just shoot from the hip and tell you what the fees are going to be associated with a K-1 Visa. You can contact us. We are happy to talk to you and provide a quotation based on circumstances but to able to just tell somebody; I have gotten a couple of emails in the last few days, where somebody has just sent me a 1 line message that said "tell me your fees for processing a K-1 from Thailand".   I need to know more from you. I need to talk to you, I need to talk to you the petitioner.  I need to know about your prospective beneficiary.  Depending on the circumstances, if there are adverse factual situations arising in prior immigration history or prior criminal history. I may need to talk directly to the proposed beneficiary. This isn't just a situation wherein I can just tell you off the top of my head without ever getting any details of your case exactly what it is going to cost because I don't know what it is going to cost until I understand your overall situation.