Midweek Memes

I have been meaning for months to give updates on my husband’s visa journey to come to the United States. President Trump via executive order paused immigrant visa processing from Thailand and 74 other countries (fully half of the world) on January 21, 2026. This overwhelmingly affects legal family based green card visas, ie the spouses and children of American citizens who intend to stay with their family in the USA. Behind the scenes Trump has been quietly expanding multiple short term visa classes for foreigners. This is being intentionally done to expand a quasi slave class of exploitable foreign labor, IMHO.

Since there is zero timeline on Ka’s immigrant visa processing, I hired a visa consulting service to help me make my husband a B1/B2 nonimmigrant family visit visa to come to the USA. They warned me in early consulting that this would probably come up against a section 214(b) refusal: a law that presumes that any temporary visitor to the US is seeking to immigrate permanently. This is precisely the reason why my husband has never set foot in the United States: because he’s married to me, a US citizen, the burden of proof that he won’t overstay in America is exceptionally high. To me though this is ridiculous in the broader migrant crackdown climate.

“Can my answer to why he won’t overstay be that I don’t want my husband to be stuck in an El Salvadorean prison?” I stated bluntly on the pre screening. Nor do I want Ka in a Texas holding pen where the prison guards place bets on which detainee will commit suicide next. I’m worried enough about him getting thrown in jail for no reason other than to pad some corporation’s profit. The last thing we would do is give them the civil charge of Ka “overstaying” as ammo. Civil offenses have none of the legal protections of criminal charges. My husband would get a much fairer trial and detention by actually commiting criminal acts while in the USA.

The officers recommended that we begin building on the land in Isaan, as this is a compelling reason to the visa officer for Ka to want to return to Thailand. This might have slightly moved up the timeline on something we had been planning to do for years anyways. In talking to family in the USA things are pretty awful sounding with stresses reported on multiple fronts, so I would want to return to Thailand after seeing the family and putting out some fires. Right now we’re stuck on the building permitting process and coming up with designs for the house.

So by late April it was time to schedule Ka’s interview at the US Embassy in Bangkok for the visitor visa. And…the website does not work for me.

I have tried to log in to the scheduling portal at least 200 times over the course of the past several weeks. I have received at least two dozen different types of error screens. Sometimes I am simply stuck in the waiting room for so long that I must reload the page. Sometimes it loops back to the sign in page after I try to sign in. Sometimes the page is not found after being in the waiting room. Sometimes there are no drop boxes or ways to click through to the actual scheduling page. Sometimes it says there is a timeout error.

Sometimes, well, who knows?

The visa consultation service company was utterly baffled, as they said the scheduling website was working perfectly well on their end. Maybe I needed a better Internet connection? I had a strong wifi signal from the hotel room in Laos and…

This isn’t like I’m trying to file for state unemployment benefits using stolen credentials from my house in Nigeria. Some US government websites maybe should be blocked from IP addresses outside of the US. But logically, if you are trying to schedule an interview in order to acquire a US visa, you are A: A foreignor who B: Is currently located outside of the United States. This is not rocket science.

It was suggested to me that I clear my cache, use a different browser, use a different device, get a stronger wifi based signal, clear stored cookies, et cetera. All of this was done with the error screens changing but the overall message the same. I cannot schedule a visa interview for my husband.

A few days ago I thought to go into That Phanom to a print shop that rents out desktop computer use by the hour. These computers usually clear every stored thing out after each user is done and have excellent gaming grade Internet.

So I tried from there. And I got an all new error screen this time!

I could lament bad luck, berate myself over what I am doing wrong, or go crazy over being targeted. But I think in the digital ID dystopia ledger something is coming for all of us that looks just like this across banking, benefits, bookings, travel, services, and everything else we all do online in order to access our money, live and move freely. So how do we stop it?

It seems these services worked better in 1999. What did happen to that “I’m Feeling Lucky” search bar?

Now if you are a billionaire pedophile none of this applies to you. You bypass immigration screening altogether just as your hardcore terrorist criminal assets do.

I took this video at Wat That Phanom in my attempt to become a Thailand tourist guide of sorts. A Christian friend on Facebook lamented that I should only be praying to Jesus. I do not think that Buddhism and Christianity are in conflict anymore than saying a prayer to Padre Pio, say, would be. I believe the only way to pray to God is sincerely.

Ka laughed on watching the video at my botched Thai pronunciations. I sometimes think part of the reason I don’t try to speak Thai much is because I’m scared I am messing it up so bad that I’m accidentally summoning demons. Or maybe I’m just casting a spell? Is it a good spell or a bad spell?

On the Mekong River.

A lot was accomplished in That Phanom but scheduling my husband’s visa interview was not among those things. Do we really have to physically go to Bangkok and pound on some doors at the US Embassy to get help here? Whatever these data centers are soaking up power for, it isn’t going to improving the functionality of critical US government websites.

Thomas Massie’s speech in losing his Congressional seat was very good so here are some highlights. Is it time for a new movement of people who can’t be bought off?

We shall see.

Buy me a ko-fi