Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing Thai Immigration. I made this video because I kind of live in this sort of swirling stew if you will of Ex Patriots and Expat sort of problems, Expat issues, so Immigration is something that just comes up in my day-to-day. On top of that, it has become my career to deal with Immigration matters going to for example the United States or coming here to Thailand.

I just thought I would make this video because there are a lot of complaints out there about Thai Immigration and some of them, I get it. 90-day reporting, it does kind of beg the question if that is the most effective way of handling that. Now that said, they have gone to an online system which has varying degrees of actual effectiveness. We assist a lot of people that are clients of ours with 90-day reporting to try to make that a non-issue and I think many of our clients would say "yeah 90-day reporting is a non-issue when you are dealing with us." There are certain aspects of Thai Immigration that could be improved upon, do not get me wrong.

That said, when you really look at the Thai Immigration System and compare it for example in my experience to the US Immigration System, wow it is a massive difference. It is orders of magnitude more Byzantine and more difficult to deal with the US Immigration system than the Thai system. I've had people complain "oh it took me a whole day to get something done, to get my Visa sorted out at Thai Immigration." It takes over a year to get a Visa, a Non-immigrant or Immigrant Visa to the United States for example like a Fiancé Visa which only grants 90 days of status to the United States, yeah it is going to take you over a year to get that, to even issue. But the ability to just get on a plane and come to Thailand and in some cases be able to extend status by going down to an Immigration Office for a few hours, that is unheard of in the Immigration System in the US and I am sure it's very similar in other Western countries: European countries, the UK, the Commonwealth, the English-speaking world. Those Immigration Systems are far more sophisticated and I mean sophisticated in the negative sense insofar as the root word being sophistry, those Immigration Systems are far more sophisticated, quite honestly quite Byzantine. In the case of the United States I am starting to really question if it is kind of almost a neo Soviet system insofar as there are all these dead ends and it seems like it is almost designed not to work or they just intentionally throw monkey wrenches into it. It's just not an overly optimal system. 

That said, compared to that, the Thai System, again for all of its faults and they are many and I have made many videos on this channel talking about them, comparing it to the West I have got to be honest with you, the Thai Immigration system in my opinion sort of wins out as far as a comparison goes.