Transcript of the above video: 

As the title of this video suggests, it appears that they are overhauling certain aspects of Thai Immigration service here in the Kingdom. I thought of making this video after reading a recent article from the Bangkok Post, bangkokpost.com, the article is titled: Bangkok Airport Immigration speed and security to the fore. Quoting directly and quoting further in the byline: Overhauling Immigration service at Suvarnabhumi airport a top priority. So before we I get into this, I want to preface this by saying, I've been talking a lot about the Destination Thailand Visa. I have received both positive and negative feedback in that discussion, but a big one has been, "well why do you think that they are going to roll out anything that could have an impact on the DTV?" Well, I've been talking about it because based on my experience, this is how the system works. Now Thai Immigration is talking about rolling out their own system at Border Security checkpoints at the airport. I can't imagine this won't have an impact on DTV and quite frankly I am starting to wonder if this might be being rolled out in response to the DTV. Quoting directly: "The Immigration Bureau (IB) aims to improve its work at Suvarnabhumi Airport by implementing new technology, including the Thailand Immigration System (TIS)." I guess we always need acronyms; I thought Thailand Immigration System is pretty simple, but whatever. Quoting further: "In an interview with the Bangkok Post, Pol. Maj. Gen. Choengron, 56, said the TIS, which is now under development, will play an important role in improving the service of Immigration Police at the airports."

One thing I am going to go into, do a bit of a deeper dive in another video is how is this going to interact with Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ new program to roll out the so-called Electronic Travel Authorization. Meanwhile, are we now going to have two digital bureaucracies people are going to have to pass through even to get into Thailand? And by the way, what value is being added by all of this digitization? As we'll get to later in this article there seems to be at least some negligible value being added to certain aspects of the border security checkpoint protocols, but overall they are just adding this stuff on. It's not like adding it and then you're taking away somewhere else from some other bureaucracy. No it's accreted bureaucracy. It's just now we have a certain layer of it that is digitized is the way I look at it. That said, quoting further: “Previously each Immigration Officers spent an average of 1 – 2 minutes verifying passenger information. New measures were recently introduced to ensure Immigration control takes no more than 45 seconds per person." Quoting further: "We have cut some steps since our officers now do not need to enter flight information into the system.." - well that makes a lot of sense. Okay that is one where digitalization has created efficiency. We have people on their flight manifest; when they come through the Border checkpoint, they see their name, they see the passport number; it automatically cross references to their flight information.  No longer does the Immigration Officer have to sort of manually enter that in. That makes some sense. I would say that that's probably a good thing overall for everybody concerned. Quoting further: "..because the system is linked to that information with the airport or airlines." So again, it is digitally just sort of automatic now. But again, as I have said in other videos, I want to see live Immigration Officers putting their eyeballs on people coming into Thailand; they need to do that. That's the function of Immigration, it needs to be a live person. This digitization may be able to help with efficiency and reduce redundancy, but at the end of the day, there really should be live people looking at folks that are coming into the Kingdom. That's at least my opinion. Quoting further: “We also stopped the need for Officers to sign the entry stamp," - again, it seems like added efficiency. That said, by stopping the signature, is that later going to lead to a scenario where they say “Well, we don't really need people looking at who's coming in...” Again, I think it's important that physical Immigration Officers are checking people coming into the country. There's just a je ne sais quoi if you will, there are just intangibles that come into play when a real person is looking at another real person that quite frankly a computer just can't see. That said, quoting further: "..while Thai passengers are not required to have their faces scanned and fingerprints taken on arrival because this is redundant." Yeah, it is redundant because we have already done it. When I became Thai, I had to give all my biometrics and every time I go through Immigration checkpoints, I don't know why they are saying they are not using facial recognition, because every time you go through a digital checkpoint and use your Thai passport, yeah they take a photo of you and they cross reference it to your photo on file, so that would seem to me to be photo scanning, but whatever. Quoting further: "With each IB (that's Immigration Bureau) Officer spending about 45 seconds per passenger, total time including queuing up at Immigration should not exceed 20 minutes, he said." Quoting further: "In addition, the IB also monitors flights that have landed and tries to implement a zone management method, distributing arriving passengers through the three Immigration zones to speed up waiting time." Quoting further: "We have reduced the redundant inspection steps, but we have not cut inspections that affect security." Good.

As I said, making this whole process more efficient, overall, that's a good idea. Completely cutting out certain really important aspects like eyes on actual people coming into the country, I think it's important to maintain those security protocols while implementing some of this digitization. Again, it means to be seen how this is going to interact with Thailand's supposed Electronic Travel Authorization coming into effect, again not sure how that is going to interact with this, but we will certainly keep you updated on this channel as the situation evolves.