Communist Party Membership and Consular Processing

Many people believe that recent Communist Party membership will unavoidably lead to a lengthy delay in visa issuance after the Consular interview. This is not necessarily the case. Recently we helped a client obtain a K-1 visa at the Guangzhou U.S. Consulate even though she was still a member of the Chinese Communist party on the day of the interview. We had helped clients in the past obtain visas who had left the Party months earlier, but this was our first attempt at a visa for a beneficiary who was still a CCP member when interviewed (although she was in the process of letting the membership lapse). Because this was a particularly challenging case, I asked a young attorney on my staff, Laurie Wu¹ to research and write a legal memorandum on the applicable standards for review in such cases, and we used these results to counsel our client on how to present her Communist Party membership during the Consular interview. The beneficiary fiancee's visa was approved on the day of the interview. The Consulate was apparently convinced by our presentation that the beneficiary's participation was "non-meaningful", and thus they did not feel the need to order a Security Advisory Opinion from the State Department (which would have delayed visa issuance by several weeks). So, the visa could be approved immediately. I attach Laurie's memorandum hereto for the benefit of those struggling with similar issues.

¹ Actually at the time Laurie was technically not yet an attorney as she was still waiting for her bar exam results; she has since learned that she passed the exam and has been admitted to the NJ bar.