When will things get back to normal at the embassies around the world? Hi, I'm Jim Hacking, immigration lawyer practicing law throughout the United States out of our offices in St. Louis, Missouri, in San Diego, California. You can see the storm clouds behind me. Hopefully those are heading out, but it's looking pretty dark here today. We're down in Florida with the kids for spring break, and I wanted to shoot a video to talk about what's going on at the embassies and what we've been seeing. So according to estimates, there are nearly half a million backlogged immigrant visa cases around the world at all the various embassies, and we're really starting to see more and more of a delay, obviously that just continued. Now, some embassies are legitimately closed and nothing's happening. The embassy in Baghdad, Iraq is closed because of violence there, and it doesn't look like anything's going to happen anytime soon there. The embassy in Brazil is very closed due to COVID and coronavirus concerns.
So the good thing is, is that we feel like that with the new administration, that we're getting honest feedback and honest information about the various embassies, so we don't feel like the embassies are playing games anymore. It seems like they're trying to do their best. But here's the thing, for the last four years, the State Department has completely been gutted. We had an idiot for Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, who drove many qualified embassy officials, consulate officials, and consulate workers outside of the embassy, drove them to quit. And we've really been seeing the consequences of that with these long delays and with these cases that just seem to go on forever. With our lawsuits, we're starting to see more movement. I think that the people who care about immigrants and who care about legal immigration are slowly taking back control of the State Department.
It's going to be a long haul. I think it's going to be about a year and a half, two years before things really get back to normal. The head of Homeland Security, Alejandro Mayorkas, gave a talk at the White House a few weeks ago that we've been talking a lot about and analyzing a lot, talking about how USDAS was dismantled. Well, the State Department was equally dismantled. So it's going to be some time before the embassies get back to normal, but we do think that they're acting in good faith and that at least at most embassies, unlike Casablanca, who's always treating immigrants like shit. Other than that, we're starting to see fair treatment for immigrants and we're starting to see things move both in our lawsuits and in our general cases that we're handling for our own clients.
So if you have questions about your embassy delay, if your case has been held up at the embassy, give us a call (314) 961-8200. You can email us at [email protected]. Be sure to join us in our Facebook group, which is called Immigrant Home. If you like this video, we asked you to please share it out on social and that you subscribe to our YouTube channel so that you get updates whenever we make videos like this one. And then usually on Tuesday and Thursday, although I haven't been able to down here in Florida to do our live show. They're coming to fix our internet in our house that we're staying in, and hopefully tomorrow I might be able to do the show. Thanks a lot and we'll see you next time.
