Transcript of the above video: 

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing the right to travel and the notion of administrative mechanisms; mandatory administrative mechanisms. Let me just jump in here. I thought of making this video after reading a recent article from the Pattaya Mail, that is pattayamail.com, the article is titled: Thailand replacing non-visa entry with Tourist Visa for structural security. Now the thrust of this article, I get into in another video made contemporaneously with this one where we are discussing the fact that it looks like Thailand is seriously considering overhauling or scrapping the visa-free system generally. Now whether or not that comes to pass or how exactly that looks remains to be seen, and I get into the analysis of that in the other video, but the thrust of this video gets into just basically the right to travel. 

Very quickly before I jump in, folks have asked me, "How can we support you? We know your channel is not monetized. We don't necessarily need to avail ourselves of a law firm at this time, is there anything we can do? Well my better half and I set up a restaurant here in downtown Bangkok. It is called Pancake Palace, as the name implies, it is breakfast anytime; we have even got English style breakfast as well as American Diner style food. It's not exclusively breakfast. We've got hamburgers, cheeseburgers; we've got buffalo wings, we've got hot dogs, chilli dogs. We've got grilled cheese sandwiches, we now have tacos, Coke in glass bottles. If you're interested come on down, the link is in the description below; we'd love to see you. Now let's jump in here. 

What are we talking about when we're talking about administrative mechanisms? Quoting directly: "The fundamental flaw embedded within the non-visa framework is that it permits individuals to cross national borders without any administrative mechanism forcing them to declare their exact purpose of stay prior to arrival."  Yeah, that is called the old school notion of the right to travel. People have an inherent right to travel. That is even noted in the UN Charter which - not a big fan of the WHO and a couple of the different organizations under the UN - but it's there, it is there for a reason. This whole paradigm of you have to explain yourself, know your customer, what is that? I don't want to know my customer; I don't want to know my client. I don't care what they're doing other than what they are doing with me. It's not our job to be nanny minders of everyone, all the time. It's not the job of - I do understand in an Immigration context, I do understand National Security, I do understand that you have to keep some level of a cohesive border in order to maintain national sovereignty. Don't get me wrong. I'm not unaware of all of that. But this notion that, “oh my God, what would we do there wasn't some administrative mechanism? People would just travel around freely”. Yeah, it was a better world when that was the presumption. I remember reading a book by Eustace Mullins - I can't even remember which one it was, but I've read a few of his - where he talked about, and this was like a book written in the late '80s, and he was viewed as like way out there and somebody on the fringe, and he was talking about yeah, the right to move your money, the right to travel; these things are going to come under attack in the next 50 years. And at the time, I remember even reading the book, the first time I read it I think back in the 90s, and I was like, "I don't know that that will ever happen". Well look at how they have shifted everybody's paradigm post-Covid. It is this whole notion that in order to move about, just as a free person, as a human, as a man on the land as it were, you have got to check in with some administrative mechanism, just by default.

Again, don't get me wrong. I understand the notions of national sovereignty. You want to screen people and what they are coming in for, but this whole nanny-state stuff that you have got to check in and we need to know every little thing you're doing, I'm sorry it's just a bridge too far, I just can't get on board with that.

I've done Immigration Law for years. To some extent I'm sort of numb to it now insofar as I'm just so used to dealing with it, but the underlying premise that people do have an inherent right to travel insofar as they can move around from country to country - again countries can opt to not let them in - but I don't think that it's ever been the default position that people travelling should be inherently heavily scrutinized and ascertain what their exact purposes are. People do at the end of the day have a right to privacy, at least as far as I'm concerned.