Transcript of the above video: 

As the title of this video suggests, we are everything about The ETA is bad; I want Thailand to know this. Well you can see from the thumbnail for this video, the thumbnail you can see the little quote there in the meme, it’s “Everything you are doing is bad, I want you to know this.” That's a great line from a great film, Ghostbusters 2, Dr. Janosz Poha, I'll put a clip in the description below to the clip where I got that line from. It's a great line. He's like this eccentric sort of cantankerous art curator at a museum in the movie Ghostbusters 2, but he just finds fault with everything so he's walking around going: “everything you are doing is bad, I want you to know this.” Well I would like Thailand to know that this ETA, just everything about it is bad. Let me dig into it.

I thought of making this video after reading a recent article from the Pattaya Mail, that is  that's pattayamail.com, the article is titled: The real deal about the end of one of Thailand's unpopular address forms. Quoting directly: “According to the interior Ministry,” and this is important, this is Interior talking now. I've discussed another video Ministry of Foreign Affairs has talked about a lot of stuff in the past and you need to be very careful with listening to that because it's not going to be them that administers immigration matters especially border check points and within the Kingdom. At the end of the day that's the Interior Ministry. So quoting again: “According to the interior Ministry, the ETA or Electronic Travel Authorization should be in place for all Visa exempt foreigners, the ones from 93 countries who receive 60 days on arrival. These countries include all the nations providing significant numbers of international vacationers.” Yeah let's make it harder for those people to get in. This Government goes on and on about how it wants to encourage tourism. Real encouraging; ring fence the whole country with a bunch of digital bureaucracy you have to fill out a bunch of forms and nonsense before coming in. Meanwhile, it's very disingenuous to say that “oh you have a Visa exemption, but you still have to do this Electronic Travel Authorization. What is Travel Authorization if it isn’t a visa?  Quoting further: “These guys and gals probably by Easter next year,” and this is an article from Mr. Kenyon down there; again tip of the hat to him. He's probably not wrong. Under the current circumstances that seems to be when they're talking about possibly rolling this out, looks like April May of next year 2025. My hope is that in future meetings amongst policy makers, people bring up the fact that this is a terrible idea. It doesn't really concern the issues that it claims to. They say “oh we need it for vetting.” We've already got those systems in place. Biometrics is out there for one. Then we've got the APPS system; then we've got the PBIX system. Meanwhile, they just hired 330 new Immigration Officers; I discussed that in another video. Why not use those people? Why not have them do their job? Why ring fence the country with extra obstacles for tourists to get in here? Are you trying to dismit, excuse me - I'm getting so angry I can't even say it - are you trying to diminish tourism here because that's what you end up going to do. You are going to end up doing that; it's just a fact. Do you really think people are going to happily fill out all these forms and nonsense for their “visa exemption”? No that's a Visa. That was the problem we had before. And I love this. The bureaucrats have all just, it's like manna from heaven or something. Digitization! Why is that? Because there's no accountability. I've been dealing with this in the US Immigration system for going on a decade now. It's just got increasingly digitized and the system has gotten worse and worse and worse. Thailand, do not get dragged into this malaise, this bureaucratic neo-soviet malaise where everything requires a form: fill out this, do that, dah, dah, dah. It doesn't help anything. Its so-called benefits are non-existent. We already have the mechanisms in place to vet these people; we don't need this system. We know what this system looks like. It's basically a carbon copy of the Thailand Pass going back into COVID which was a terrible idea then, because there wasn't any good reason for it as we now know. But meanwhile, there's this continued drive to keep imposing this stuff and to what end? It doesn't actually provide any benefits to speak of and it could dramatically and detrimentally impact the Thai Tourism sector. Quoting further: "These guys and gals probably by Easter next year have to apply online for permission to enter Thailand.” How is permission to enter Thailand any different than a Visa?" Quoting further: "And on permitted arrival will be able to pass through Immigration's electronic gates at entry points with a personally provided QR code." I don't like any of that for a variety of different reasons. First off, we just hired 330 new Immigration Officers. I want in-person vetting of foreigners. I want somebody looking them in the eye. Look there is an intangible, there's an art to what these guys are doing. I know you don't really think that and I know it's sort of it's sort of strange to say that about Immigration, but I rant a lot about bureaucracy, sometimes it's needed. We do need people on our borders; we need border checkpoints; we need border guards and we need them looking these people in the eye. Yes we have biometrics, yes digitization can create some extra benefits and they are great tools for enforcement and for assessment of people coming into the Kingdom, but we really need eyeballs on people coming in. Somebody could be letter perfect on all of their documentation you just look at me and say “I want to put this guy into secondary inspection; there's something about him that just bothers me.”  Some computer system with a QR code does not have that discernment. Meanwhile there are all kinds of ways the Kafkaesque, catch-22 style situation can arise where legitimate tourists just get caught up in this sort of whirlpool of bureaucratic nonsense, they throw up their hands they say “I'm either not coming to Thailand or I'm never coming back to Thailand.” Again there's no major benefit accrued by this. That said, and furthermore this push toward everything being on a QR code, why don't you just tattoo it to our forehead; you can just radar stamp us. What do they use at the grocery store? They use that laser blinker thing, and okay “beep”, you can come into Thailand. This is that level of Orwellian we are talking about. Meanwhile, that level of Orwellian does not actually enforce Immigration Law better. If anything, it's a substandard way of dealing with it. Again, we have personnel. These people should be eyeballing these people coming in. Yes it is a benefit for Thai nationals; I use my Thai Passport all the time when I'm coming in. I get to put the passport in the electronic reader, put my finger on the thing, it verifies my fingerprint with my passport, boom I'm in the country. I'm Thai; I've been vetted about as much as you could possibly be vetted for a foreigner in Thailand. That said, somebody who is brand new "oh I filled out an online form, that's a great way to vet." No it isn't. Immigration themselves should be vetting those people. That's exactly what their job is and they should be doing it. They shouldn't be going through QR coded cattle ramps or whatever; no that's silliness.

Again when you get into this sort of and I hate to bring up the World Economic Forum, but it all smells like what they're selling. You get into this and when you really deep dive into it, it's nonsensical. It sounds like it's more security; it sounds like it's more vetting but the reality of it is it's not because as it said in this article itself, actual Immigration Officers are no longer going to be eyeballing people. They are going to use this QR code. There are a million ways that you can game systems. I remember I took a course in college; my professor I rather liked, he was kind of a cantankerous old guy. The course was Political Corruption, he used to joke with me all the time that I got an A in that course, he was like ‘is that a good thing or a bad thing’ but he did talk about political corruption sort of in a broad sort of waterfront kind of sense of the topic and he said, at the end of the day, political corruption comes down to one thing. It's bypassing systems. It’s is systems analysts and hacking systems. If anybody here thinks criminals, especially transnational criminals, are unable to game some online electronic travel authorization and get their little QR code that now is sort of their label that they're okay, and then just sort of slip into Thailand, if people think that's not possible, I have a movie recommendation for you. Go watch the movie The Jackal with Bruce Willis, Sidney Poitier and Richard Gere. It's sort of a remake, not quite a remake but I think it was in the vein of the original Day of the Jackal movie but again it shows sort of in the 90s, he has all this documentation, there's ways to game these systems and he does that and he uses them to go through all kinds of checkpoints and things. In that movie they were still using actual physical people which you find out later in the film that's actually what got him caught was he had to interact with live people as opposed to just a bunch of paperwork and bureaucracy which is faceless and just kind of a conveyor belt that moves you on down the road. The point I'm trying to make is this is not an optimal system. That said, quoting further: "The individuals will likely be refused boarding at airports or refused entry at seaports and border checkpoints unless the bureaucracy has been successfully completed." Well as we discussed in other videos, APPS can already do that. If you're in the APPS system as somebody they don't want to let in, you can't get on the plane and come to Thailand. We already have this functionality. Meanwhile really? We want to encourage more bureaucracy and we want to impose that upon tourists? People who are coming here to just drop money off in the country? That's who we want to put all this onus on? Really? Is that a great idea? Quoting further: "Although the ETA, required for every visit, will be notionally free, that's not the end of the story." Yeah, it ain't. Quoting further: "Thailand will introduce the long-delayed Tourist Tax of 300 Baht by air and 150 Baht by land and sea." Which I didn't even know about this 150 baht when that just sort of came up out of nowhere. I don't know where that came from.

Meanwhile, again this Tourist Tax has been a bad idea since whoever came up with it, came up with it. It does nothing but make Thailand look bad. If you impose this, I think it's going to make people resentful and therefore could drive away more tourists. Quoting further: "It has long been argued that collecting cash at entry points would lead to long queues and much frustration by visitors and Immigration officers alike. ETA provides the answer by insisting you pay beforehand and electronically by card." How about just don't do it? It's not the answer. It's the worst idea; you are creating a ring fence; you are creating obstacles for people to get into Thailand. Meanwhile, you know Bureaucracy, you're so desperate for cash and for revenue, for taxes - you didn't seem all that desperate when you shut down our economy for two and a half years at your behest. We had to go through "Oh just deal with it. Your business isn't open, you have to deal with it!" Now you have to deal with it. This is the knock-on effect of two years of no Revenue. Sorry, you don't get your budgets the way you want it right now because we are still building back up the economy to get the revenue stream back up to where it needs to be. Instead of trying to drive away tourists with nonsensical digital bureaucracy and taxes that really shouldn't be applied in the first place, how about you do your job of trying to get more tourists into the country, not trying to force them out or fleece them coming in. And then meanwhile it looks terrible. This Tourism Tax was a bad idea when it was come up with. And meanwhile, you are going to put that in everyone's face, every single time they try to come into Thailand utilizing this Electronic Travel Authorization. Does no one see how that could be a bad idea? Quoting further: "At some stage in 2025 the ETA system will be extended to include all foreigners entering Thailand, including all non-immigrant Visa holders such as retirees." I did another video contemporaneously with this one and I urge those who are watching this video, stay tuned, but yeah there is a video where I specifically talked about retirees and Non-Immigrant Visa holders and this ETA; it's a bad idea there too. That said, quoting further: "Such a system is becoming common worldwide," Neat. You know a lot of systems were common worldwide over hundreds of years that Thailand completely ignored. Thailand you need to get back. Back into your own headspace of taking care of your own problem. I don't care what the rest of the world is doing. You know it's like my mama once said, "if everybody's jumping off a bridge, you going to jump off a bridge too?" No, it's not a good idea. This is a terrible idea and by the way the "rest of the world", are you talking about the Western world, the so-called golden billion, the folks that are sinking it to a morass of bureaucracy and debt and all kinds of problems that at this point are almost systemic and I worry that they will ever be able to solve them. That's our role model? Hey let's make the Soviet Union our role model too. Let's go back to that maybe. Come on! Or the other one that they will, "well China does this. Neat, everybody has social credit up in China. You can't walk around without everybody knowing who you are and every little detail about you, having no privacy. And look, I have go no beef with China. China wants to be China, you be China. You like the CCP up there? That's great. But why does that mean that we in Thailand have to do it? I'm tired of this tone of like "well worldwide people do it!” Neat, go back to there. This is Thailand. This is not what we're doing. There is a great line, I can't remember what the movie was, where it's got Billy Bob Thornton in it and it's in Louisiana and somebody shows up and said well "we are from the headquarters and you need to be doing this." Billy Bob Thornton turns around and says "well hey, this ain't Shreveport." This ain't Shreveport here in Thailand, okay? It's Thailand. I don't care what the rest of the world is doing. The rest of the world does a whole bunch of stupid stuff that Thailand doesn't do all the time. We are not sitting there encouraging that, and I am not saying the writer here is encouraging that. But even the observation, I got to bring up the fact that just because everybody else is doing it or it seems like, and that's the other thing, it seems that way, just because it seems that way doesn't mean it's a great idea. Quoting further: "for example in UK which starts its electronic entry bureaucracy for all visitors next month. Basically, ETA replaces decisions by Immigration Officers on the ground by prior electronic checking of wannabe entrants." We already have prior checking by wannabe entrants. It's called the APPS system, Advanced Passenger Processing System. We have it, so that's not the thing. Then meanwhile what, the UK is going to be the model for things that we do? No offence to anybody and I have a lot of British friends and they're real good people but I'm looking over to the UK at this particular moment, and there isn’t anything that I look at that I'm sitting there going, “you know Thailand should take a page from their book; let's go do that!” No, I'm sorry. Look at the end of the day Thailand really rethink this, please. Because I think the minute you impose this thing, it's just going to be one giant boondoggle that's going to do nothing but cost Thailand money, cost Thailand tourists, and possibly have a tremendous negative impact on the Tourism Sector here in the Kingdom of Thailand in generally.