Tag Archives: Fiancee Visas

Snapshot: Top Fiancé(e) Visa Issuance Posts (By Country) — FY2014

December 21, 2015 By in Controversies, Foreign Service, Functional Bureaus, Interagency Cooperation, Petition, Regulations, Snapshots, State Department, U.S. Missions, Visas Tags: , , , , , ,

Posted: 2:01 am EDT
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We put together a list of top K visa issuance posts by country, and region extracted from the travel.state.gov data page.  Applicants in Asia includes visa applicants from Oceania and what would typically be Near East Asia, East Asia Pacific and South Central Asia.  Applicants that we would typically put under WHA are broken down into North and South America. It would be an improvement to Consular Affair’s annual statistics if they can break down issuances/refusals based on the State Department’s geographic bureaus. Right now, the visa numbers are broken down by region that do not remotely correspond to any of the department’s geographic division.

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Notes:  K-1, K-2: Immigration laws passed by Congress allow an alien fiance(e) of a U.S. citizen and his/her minor child under 21 years old (and unmarried) to be admitted to the United States for 90 days so that a marriage ceremony can take place in the United States. More here.

K-3, K-4: Immigration laws passed by Congress allow the alien spouse of a U.S. citizen and his or her minor children to be admitted to the United States as nonimmigrants while they are awaiting the adjudication of a Form I-130 Petition for Alien Relative. More here.

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@StateDept Spox Talks About K-Visas Again … C’mon Folks, This Is Not Fun to Watch

December 16, 2015 By in Consular Work, Foreign Service, Functional Bureaus, Questions, Social Media, State Department, Visas Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

Posted: 2:57 am EDT
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This is a follow-up to our post Dear @StateDept, You Need Bond. Michele Bond at the Daily Press Briefing. On December 14, State Department spokesman John Kirby got his turn to answer questions about K-visas at the podium.  Prior to the exchange below, Mr. Kirby told the press that “Again, I’m not an expert on process… we can get somebody who’s much better at this than me to walk you through how that’s done, okay?”

Folks, you need your expert there last week!  C’mon, this is not fun to watch.

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QUESTION: John, another visa question. The Wall Street Journal has just put out an alert saying that the United States is working on a plan to scrutinize social media in visa reviews. And in the text of their story, they say that the Department of Homeland Security is working on such a plan. I have myself never fully understood the different responsibilities between the State Department, which issues the visas and conducts the interviews, and DHS, which performs some kind of a review prior to the issuance of a visa. So, I guess, two questions: One, can you explain to me the difference between those roles? And two, given that the State Department already has the option to scrutinize social media, why DHS is just kind of cottoning onto this?

MR KIRBY: Well, I won’t speak for DHS and decisions that they might be making. I think – I have not seen that report, but it’s very much consistent with what I think I’ve been saying here, that we are also looking at the use of social media in the visa application process.

Again, with my vast experience here at the State Department, I’ll do the best I can to try to summarize this, and I’ll ask Elizabeth, who’s been a consular officer, to jump if she thinks I get this wrong. And I mean that, you should. As I understand it, we are the overseas arm here. DHS is the homeland arm of the process of an individual who wants to come the United States for whatever legal reason – marriage, want to cover a story, whatever. So somebody applies for a visa over there, and our embassy or consuls will examine that application and make certain decisions about whether it’s going to be permitted or not – approved or not. And again, that process can take any – a different, variant amount of time based on the individual. And again, it’s all done by case – case by case.

The simple act of a consular officer saying, “Okay, it’s approved; you can travel to the United States,” doesn’t actually mean that the individual is going to be able to complete that travel, because there’s – DHS does help in this process. But where they really are important is at port of entry here in the United States. So when an individual – and all of us have traveled overseas. You go up to the customs desk and then they are the – they’re the final point at which an individual is allowed to enter or not, and that’s where DHS is most critical is at the port of entry and doing yet another validation of the permission, the – which is what a visa is. It’s basically us saying you are permitted to travel, where they get that sort of final vote in validating that permission.

So it’s got to be – and as I understand it, it’s not a simple, clean handoff either. I mean, there’s constant coordination and communication between State and DHS throughout the process of one’s application. But ultimately DHS gets the final say when an individual gets to the United States.

Did I cover that well enough? Okay, thanks.

QUESTION: DHS must get involved before they simply show up on American shores?

MR KIRBY: Yeah, as I said, it’s not a clean handoff. It’s not like the State Department says okay, here’s —

QUESTION: Okay.

MR KIRBY: I mean we work with DHS throughout the application process and approval.

QUESTION: And are you saying that the DHS and the State Department may have different standards and policies as it applies to, for instance, scrubbing social media?

MR KIRBY: I don’t – I don’t know what DHS’s policies are, so I can’t speak for that.

QUESTION: Okay.

MR KIRBY: But it is a factor in our process.

QUESTION: Mm-hmm.

MR KIRBY: And in light of what happened in San Bernardino, I can assure you that we’re going to continue to look at social media practices and platforms going forward. And we’re going to do this – we’re doing this review in concert with DHS, and I think it’s safe to assume that as we conduct the review, when we learn things – if there’s things that we can do better, we’ll do it better as a team, not individually.

QUESTION: Right. I just wonder if people are pointing fingers right now saying, “No, you were supposed to check that; that was your deal.” Whose deal is it?

MR KIRBY: I’m not aware of any finger pointing that’s going on inside the interagency right now. What we want to do is cooperate with investigators, learn as much as we can about how this happened, and do whatever we can to try to prevent it from happening again. And I can tell you – again, I don’t like speaking for another agency, but I think I’m on safe ground saying that Secretary Johnson shares Secretary Kerry’s concern that we work in concert and as a team as we both cooperate with the investigation and conduct this review.

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Dear @StateDept, You Need Bond. Michele Bond at the Daily Press Briefing

December 10, 2015 By in Consular Work, Foreign Service, Functional Bureaus, Realities of the FS, SCA | South Central Asia, State Department, Technology and Work, Terrorism, Top Ranks, U.S. Missions, Visas Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , 4 Comments

Posted: 4:08 am EDT
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In case you missed this:

 

We’ve just read the Daily Press Briefing from last week with the press corps asking questions about K-1 visas related to the San Bernardino attack.

Oh, holy mother of goat and her stupid nephews!

It should have been all hands on deck to know absolutely everything about this case.  Instead we have Mark Toner, the deputy spokesperson of the State Department on December 3, either asking to take the question, or guessing his response. “I don’t know “…. “I would presume …”

Then the next day, Elizabeth Trudeau, the Press Office director did the DPB and seriously underwhelmed our video player. She refused to confirm that the K-1 visa was issued in Islamabad, something that Mr. Toner already talked about just the day before. 

Folks, haven’t you learned anything at all?  Anything? It’s not like this case is locked in a file cabinet in the catacombs of Foggy Bottom..  That’s why you have your consular systems.

 

Her name is Bond, Michelle Bond.

The State Department need to put its Consular Affairs Assistant Secretary of State Michele Bond up there at the podium to answer these questions.  Help the journalists understand the K-1 process, and the roles State and DHS play in the systems currently in place.  PA officials who have not done visa work in 15-20 years should not be left on the podium guessing about the process and unable to answer questions about this case.

When the press asks, “Can Americans have confidence in this visa processing system?”, Ms. Bond should be able to say “Absolutely, and here’s why.”  And she should be able to explain clearly the whys.  Hopefully, she’s not going to say because “it’s an adaptable system” or  that “We continue to improve it.” Because people are not really interested whether it’s an adaptable system. They want an assurance that the systems in place work; and if it did not work in the visa issuance process for Tashfeen Malik, they want to know what had been done to update that process.

We were going to suggest that the State Department convene an Accountability Review Board per 12 FAM 030. The ARB Permanent Coordinating Committee, where the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Visa Services sits as one of its seven members, by the way, can make that recommendation to the Secretary:

“The ARB process is a mechanism to foster more effective security of U.S. missions and personnel abroad by ensuring a thorough and independent review of security- related incidents. Through its investigations and recommendations, the Board seeks to determine accountability and promote and encourage improved security programs and practices. In addition, the ARB mechanism enhances the integrity of the visa issuing process by determining accountability in certain instances in which terrorist acts in the United States are committed by aliens.”

Except that current regulations are quite clear that “a Board will be convened with respect to a visa incident only if the following three determinations are made:”

(1)  That the incident involved a terrorist act causing serious injury, loss of life, or significant destruction of property in the United States;

(2)  That there is probable cause to believe that a specifically identified alien was a participant in the terrorist act; and

(3)  That the alien was issued a visa on or after May 1, 1996; at the time of visa issuance, the alien’s name was included in the Department’s Consular Lookout and Support System (CLASS) and that the visa was issued as a result of a failure by the consular officer to adhere to the procedures required to be followed by the inclusion of the name in such visa lookout system.

Since State is confident of its vetting process, it appears right now that subject was not in the CLASS.  Which would make the ARB not a requirement under these regs.

Nonetheless, it would be helpful to know if the State Department has reviewed its internal processes or that it plans to do so. This individual got through  — despite the vetting, the interagency sharing of information, fingerprints, etc, and the face to face interview —  it is not unreasonable to ask how she got in. Maybe there are no cracks, but the public needs to understand the process, which will never with 100% fault-free.

As our consular blog pal told us, “It will never be fault-free because humans aren’t.” People can get away with lying, or can change their minds. Unless the USG has come up with a precognition system similar to Philip K. Dick’s in the Minority Report, there is no way to determine an individual’s action in the future. What do you do with a culprit that has not yet committed a crime? Do you arrest him or her before he/she commits a future crime thereby protecting the public from all prospective harm?  What regulations apply to that?


Daily Press Briefing excerpts:

On December 3, Mr. Toner, the State Department’s deputy spox took a stab at the K-1 questions.  If you want to beat your head against the wall, hard … well, we can understand the feeling, but wear your helmet first, okay?

QUESTION: — of the suspects in the San Bernardino mass shooting that happened yesterday? There are various statements and reports out there about Tashfeen Malik, the alleged female shooter suspect who was killed yesterday. Some are saying that she lived in Saudi Arabia before coming to the U.S. And what I wonder is the extent to which the State Department has been pulled into this investigation. Can you give us some kind of guidance on whether those reports are accurate? And if so, what type of visa was she in the United States on? Is there anything about the citizenship status of her that you can share with us?

MR TONER: Sure. Well, since it’s already been reported out in the press, I can confirm that she did receive or was issued a K-1 so-called fiancee visa, I believe in 2012. Is that correct? 2015 – 2000 – help me here. Okay, we’ll get that number for you. Unfortunately, it’s not in front of me here. But she did receive that from Pakistan. That allowed her to travel here to the United States.
[….]
QUESTION: Does that require an interview?

MR TONER: If that petition is approved, the case is forwarded to the U.S. consulate abroad in order to verify the qualifying relationship and vet the applicant for any derogatory information. I’m virtually sure that, as in any visa – as in any visa processing, that that involves an interview. I don’t know if —

QUESTION: But not a joint interview, right? They don’t have to appear together at the consular office, wherever that is?

MR TONER: Not – that I’ll have to – I’ll have to take that question. I’m not sure. I’m not sure.

[….]

QUESTION: And can you also check on the – that before getting that given visa, where did they meet? Because I’m not sure, but if I’m remembering correctly, there is a clause that they should have met or like – it’s not just on the —

MR TONER: Again, no, that wouldn’t – so that wouldn’t – again, I would refer those kinds of questions to the FBI who’s conducting the investigation into this.

QUESTION: Well, what happens if they don’t get married within 90 days?

MR TONER: I would presume that the – that would invalidate the visa.

QUESTION: And if – okay. And then if they do, does that mean that the visa is extended or they have to apply for something else?

MR TONER: Unclear to me whether that would be – that would be automatically extended. I would somewhat doubt that. There may be – again, I’m – I’d have to get you the full facts on it. I mean, if there’s extenuating circumstances, perhaps. I don’t know in this particular case and can’t really speak to it, but there’s a 90-day window because there’s a 90-day window. So, I mean —

QUESTION: Right. But one doesn’t automatically become a U.S. citizen —

MR TONER: No, not at all.

QUESTION: — simply because one married one. So clearly —

MR TONER: Not at all. So any individual would have to provide for legal residency or a green card after living here, I guess, in – it’s one year, I think.
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