My father passed away today. Is there any chance of quickly getting my Thai wife a visa to the USA?

[Liverpool Lou]

On 12/17/2023 at 7:14 PM, jakow said:

My father recently retired in Thailand, but sadly he passed away today. We're figuring out how to go about sending his remains back to the USA for the funeral. I want my wife (who is Thai) to come for the funeral, and then our children could also come. Is there any special type of visa she could get or any way of getting her a visa in time?

Wouldn't the US Embassy be the place you should be asking that?

[Liverpool Lou]

8 hours ago, charleskerins said:

Good Luck

Can I get an emergency visa to the US for a death in the family?

You can qualify for an emergency US visa appointment to attend the funeral of an immediate family member in the United States. The Department of State only recognizes parents, siblings, children, grandparents, and grandchildren as immediate family members.

If that information is correct, the OP should not get his hopes up.

[Skeptic7]

In a word...No. 

Condolences.

[ChicagoExpat]

A lot of it depends on how long you've been married, how well settled you are here, where you source of income is, and -- most important -- how well the applicant is able to explain herself and her travel plans.

 

There is a high rate of refusal for new marriages, a pretty low rate for well-established ones (although as you'll hear, there are some bad examples of refusals for legit marriages).

 

The cost of a visa is $185, a small fraction of the cost of plane travel and time in the U.S. and if it's issued -- that's 10 years of travel.  As long as you're prepared for a rejection and don't let it ruin your life, why not try it?  Again, if you're newly married, etc per above, maybe not try.

 

Please note I have some specific insight into this topic, which I won't explain here.

[jakow]

I just want to follow-up here so it can help other people or set the record straight for others who said this is not possible. Due to the death of my father (my wife's father-in-law, no blood relation) she was able to get an expedited visa appointment the next day and was approved for her visa at the end of the interview. It arrived in the mail about 2 weeks later, but I believe if it wasn't Christmas and New Years it would've been faster.

 

The US embassy has an emergency visa application process. You book an appointment through the normal route, then in the portal area there's a link to apply for an expedited/emergency appointment. It explains on this page what information you need to provide. After applying you wait for the email letting you know if you were approved. We were approved, so we then booked an emergency visa appointment for the very next day. She was approved and we just got her 10 year "M" B1B2 visa. I think (hope) this is a 10 year multiple entry visa, but I'm going to start another post to confirm.

 

So it definitely is possible to get a visa very quickly to the USA, at least in our case.

[bamnutsak]

2 minutes ago, jakow said:

So it definitely is possible to get a visa very quickly to the USA, at least in our case.

 

Thanks for the follow-up.

 

In your OP you mentioned your children accompanying you and your wife. Did that work out as well?

 

What information/documentation did you have to provide to support the urgent nature of the visa application?

[jakow]

21 minutes ago, bamnutsak said:

 

Thanks for the follow-up.

 

In your OP you mentioned your children accompanying you and your wife. Did that work out as well?

 

What information/documentation did you have to provide to support the urgent nature of the visa application?

My children are dual US-Thai citizens with US passports, so that's no issue. It was just the wife who needed a visa.

 

For the emergency appointment application, we uploaded a photo of my dad's birth certificate and my birth certificate to prove relation, a letter from the funeral director with their contact information and the date of the funeral, and also a letter from my mother (this was not required) saying how much my wife has helped through this whole process and how she should be at the funeral.

 

Also, when we were dealing with the death and remains, the US embassy was extremely helpful. My wife was in contact with a Thai woman at the embassy through the whole process. She would not assist in any way with the visa process though.

 

EDIT: Also, I should add that we did not book our airline tickets yet and that wasn't an issue. We booked our tickets after she was approved.

Edited January 8 by jakow