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The Royal Thai Embassy in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing the Royal Thai Embassy in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. 

We are making this in the midst of the COVID-19 lockdown but this is a general video. I decided to go ahead and make these videos to discuss the Thai Embassies in ASEAN just to kind of provide some insight to folks, especially for those folks who may have to do a Visa run immediately following the Amnesty which will be lifted July 31, 2020 but this is a video for general usage as well. So let me be clear on that. Those who are watching this video, if you are interested in this particular Thai Embassy, it is a good idea to finish this video out. 

So the Royal Thai Embassy in Kuala Lumpur is located at 206 Jalan Ampang, 50450 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

Something to take away from this video. In my opinion folks have kind of a mistaken impression if you will of how especially Visa Sections at Thai Embassies and Consulates abroad function and one of the big things I would note is different Embassies really do have different ways of processing things; sometimes they even have different documentation requirements. Now this may seem kind of counterintuitive to one who says "well you know the Immigration law is what it is and why should there be all this variance? I don't really understand that."  Well the reason is the Immigration Law is promulgated as sort of a uniform body of law but from an administrative level, the Officers of the Thai Ministry of Foreign Affairs that staff the Thai Embassy in Malaysia, they have some discretion with respect to for example evidence they find compelling to meet the elements and evidentiary requirements of a visa application. They also have a great deal of on the ground discretion with respect to how things are processed; how they want to see the visa application put together for example. They collate it a certain way so that they can efficiently adjudicate these cases. So again, different Embassies are going to do things slightly differently.  I see a lot of people that come to me and say "Hey, you know I did a visa application at the Thai Embassy in Phnom Penh, Cambodia and it is totally different to the way that you do things at the Thai Embassy in Malaysia." Well that is kind of the nature of the beast. The staff at these Embassies, the staff at these Ministry of Foreign Affairs posts outside of Thailand, they have some on the ground discretion.

One also has to keep in mind Visa adjudication and issuance of visas as well as admission to a given country, tends to fall under the sovereign plenary power of that country's governmental apparatus so this isn't legal in the strict sense of the term. For that reason, the Immigration Officers at land borders as well as Thai Consular Officers at Embassies and Consulates outside of Thailand have a great deal of discretion stemming from their plenary power or stemming from their authority under this plenary cloak if you will to ask for various things. They can make factual requests. They want to see more documentation and they can make factual determinations with a great deal more latitude compared to other types of Government Officers who have to more strictly adhere to, I hesitate to say the letter of the law because that is not what is going on here, the officers are adhering to the letter of the law but their discretion with respect to factual determination and with respect to their discretion to require further evidence, that is operating under plenary power and they have a great deal of latitude with respect to that when compared to other types of functions that the Thai Government may perform.