On Professional Visa Consultants

[fxm88]

Recently my Thai wife got a CR-1 (immigrant/spouse) visa to the the United States. We hired a visa consultant to help us, however it's a pretty simple process and I think you could do it without the aid of a professional. In fact, I would probably recommend against hiring a consultant (unless you really had some kind of special circumstance and even then I'm not sure if they'd be of any real help.)

My goal in hiring a consultant was to avoid mistakes and minimize aggravation. A couple years ago we I had a really unpleasant time trying to get a tourist visa for her, and I was not looking forward to dealing with the Embassy again.

The company we hired has offices in one of the office buildings near the embassy. About 40 people on staff and they seemed pretty busy. They also have an "office" here in Pattaya (really just a storefront that arranges the van to shuttle prospects and clients to the Bangkok office). They advertise a "no visa, no pay" guarantee, of course. A quick search of the Internet didn't turn up anything. So we hired them. We hired them to help us: get married, petition the USCIS, and apply for the visa. All that for only 60,000 baht.

The first thing they did was take us to get married. (My wife and I have been together for about 2.5 years and together we have a 1 year old baby, but we never bothered to get married. I'd even done the affidavit back when I applied for our kid's U.S. citizenship, but we never used it and now it was too old and we needed a new one.) Anyways, the staff spelled my name (in Thai) differently than the way it's spelled on our kid's birth certificate. We'd already supplied them with the birth certificate so they could easily have gotten it right. I don't know if this was a big problem or no problem at all but a few days later we were back to Bangkok, back in the government office, re-signing new papers. (At that time I didn't know that she could have kept her maiden name. Which would have been my preference. Had she not changed her name could we have skipped the trip to the passport office to get it changed in her passport? And the trip to her hometown to get it changed in her Tabien Baan? My wife assures me that "Miss" would still have had to have been changed to "Missus". In any case, I wasn't asked about it.)

The next step was submitting my I-130 petition to the USCIS in Bangkok. Although we'd arrived in the morning, the staff wanted us to submit the petition at 2pm. We suggested going earlier, but they insisted on 2pm, so we submitted the petition at 2pm. A few minutes before 3pm (did I mention this office closes at 3pm?) the petition was returned to us with with some minor mistakes highlighted. The mistakes were easily fixed but there was no time to fix them and also go to the embassy to pay the fee (you have to get the invoice before you can pay the fee) and come back with the receipt. So we spent an unplanned night in Bangkok (the shuttle bus already gone back to Pattaya earlier in the day) and resubmitted it the next day.

At this point I was starting to get disappointed in this comapny. I started doing more Internet research on them and found some potentially disturbing things. First, this company operates under 2 or 3 different names -- one is the lawyers office, another is their travel agency -- Not a big deal I guess, but everyone's business card has a different name on it, the shuttle van has a different name on it, etc. They have a number of websites and Internet domain names, too. (By the way, email to any of the "official" addresses went unanswered; if you wanted to make sure someone got an email you had to send it directly to that staff member's hotmail or AOL address.)

The most disturbing thing I found was that they also appeared to be running a sex-tourism business. To quote the website I found: "Our single-man tour program is exclusively organized for single men to join in and have a self-indulgent throughout the whole 10 days trip of paradise on earth participated with a lot of charming Thai ladies, who will fresh up your dull and boring lives. The tour averages 2 Thai ladies for every man attending and giving him a chance to meet a lady of his type and to keep on their intimate relationship after the tour program finishes." I never would have hired this company had I known about this and I cannot understand why they would jeopardize their legitimate business by even giving the appearance of being associated with this kind of business. (I looked up the domain registrations and it's in their "main" name like they didn't even try to hide it, and the webservers even have the same IP address.)

Another irritant was being hit up for money whenever their shuttle van took us to Bangkok. For example, the Embassy scheduled an interview for a Monday morning. Since we'd need to leave Pattaya extra early the company suggested that we pay 500 baht for "oil". (After going back and forth with them over the next 3 days they finally agreed to just let us pay the motorway tolls and it didn't seem to make any difference to them that our second 30,000 baht payment hinged on us making it to this interview.)

So in the end it saved us neither time nor trouble: for sure we would have made mistakes, but they made mistakes that we arguably would not have made; and dealing with this company was probably as much hassle as dealing with the embassy. I would recommend doing it yourself (and treat yourself to taxis back and forth to Bangkok.) Although, if you're not physically present in Thailand I'm not sure what your alternatives are.

I haven't mentioned the name of this company. Maybe I should have but my guess is that most of these companies are about the same (if you PM me I can supply you with this detail). If you do hire a consultant be real, real careful about who you choose (try Googling for their phone number: web domains are cheap and e-mail addresses are basically free but phonelines can still cost real money) and even then you should probably still expect trouble. In any case, I wish you good luck!

Edited October 25, 2006 by fxm88

[Maizefarmer]

FXM88

mmm ... wonder just what else they are involved in?

Go on - print their name, its in every ones interest that companies like this are avoided - or PM it to me and I'll happily take the responsibility for printing it - and then if they want to come chasing me that will be just fine, they can do just that if they wish.

Its my opinion you were ripped off - and yes, your " visa agent" observation is spot on i.e. they were offering you nothing that you couldn't have done yourself.

Other than helping a Thai applicant to understand and reply to answers correctly on visa application forms and other legal tyoe doc's, all the input should be the applicant's.

Any visa agent who says they will garuntee you get the visa is having you on. You either satify the requirements or you don't and any effort to bxxxxxxt your way through the application process is just likely to leave you a with a "loss of face" situation - and loss of money. Think the ECO's in embassies can't smell a "visa agent" application a mile off? Og course they can, they ain't stupid, they work with applications day in day out year in year out. They know a "questionable" application when they see one.

Other than for agents who provide a collection and delivery service to and from the various embassies (which is nothiong more than a conveniance) they really are a waste (of money) - and that is all they are interested in (your money).

Don't use visa agents for anything more than translating and/or understanding the questions on the forms. Most embassies havea dozen youngsters hanging out at the front door to help applicants fill in their forms for around Baht 250 - 500. But their it should stop - no more than that.

A complete waste FXM88 - print their name for all to benefit from.

Tim

[samran]

Lets just take this as a general lesson about visa agents.

BUT do not print the name of the company please, as it is Thai Visa which will be in the crapper...