@Rogerio *****

my wife told me what happened. He took the documents, I am not hypothesizing. In fact, the instructions from the embassy say to bring documents to prove employment, income, bank balances etc. Your assertion that the adjudicating consular officer will almost always refuse to look at documents does not ring true to me. It also contradicts what consular officers themselves have told me while I was an FSO. I think it is bad advice to discourage people from having these documents on hand when they go to the interview.

Now that I think about it, my wife, when asked the question "what job does your boyfriend have ?" , answered that I was her husband, I was retired, and I used to work at the embassy. Then she handed him the documents. So the answer to the "boyfriend's job" question is probably critical to the adjudicating consular officer agreeing to look at any documents.

That may be the key to the reason why your girlfriend was refused and why you are so skeptical about having corroborating documents to show. How did she answer when they asked about your job ? Was the answer "Travel blogger" ? "Crypto trader" ? The consular officers are trained to be suspicious of various occupations like these and many others, like bar owner, pizzeria owner, beauty salon owner. Once they hear something like this, they make a summary refusal and don't bother looking at documents.

I'm not speculating about this. This comes directly from consular officers I knew who told me.

Also, since then, the fees have doubled, which discourages many potential applicants

@Rogerio *****

I also provided copies of my expired diplomatic passport and expired thai diplomatic residence permit from when I was assigned to embassy bangkok. So who knows, maybe they were just throwing a bone to a former colleague, but my wife didn't say anything about me being a retired foreign service officer and I didn't mention this in the cover letter. the consular officer would have only seen these documents if he looked through the entire packet and found them at the end

@Rogerio *****

i also included a signed I-134 affidavit of financial support and my latest IRS tax transcript. Also proof that she was covered in the USA by my health insurance

@Rogerio *****

i was not present during the interview. I gave my wife a packet of documents, about 30 pages with a cover letter and table of contents. I told her to make sure she gave them to the adjudicating consular officer for his review. The consular officer took the entire package, left my wife at the window, and spent 10 minutes at his desk, reading them I suppose. He came back and approved her visa

13 years years ago, before social media, when I worked at Embassy Bangkok, there were no Facebook groups in which potential visa applicants could learn about the difficulties involved. That long ago, the refusal rate was a lot higher

@Rogerio *****

I'm surprised the refusal rate is so low now. It used to be much higher. I guess thai people have learned how difficult it is and only qualified people are applying

@Rogerio *****

I'd like to join your Facebook groups, can you provide links ?

My wife got the tourist visa on the first try.

I can attest, your story about the three questions is correct.

Your advice to supply a stack of documents proving you have no intention of living in the US is also sound. Real estate owned in Thailand, thai driver's license and car registration, a timeline of your travels out of Thailand over the past five years, copies of your passport pages, thai bank statement, these help

Being married, rather than just a girlfriend, also helps.

We originally petitioned for a k1, but withdrew it because there are US domicile requirements that I don't meet. I provided documentation that we withdrew the k1 petition for this reason , this also helped

@Frank *********

got my wife a visa also, same story. I live with her full time in Thailand, and I was able to document this.