Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are asking: "Should the Thai Immigration apparatus be "outsourced"?" I thought of making this video after reading a recent article, actually it was a letter in Postbag in Bangkok Post bangkokpost.com under the heading: Immigration rethink, quoting directly: "The Immigration Bureau should follow the lead of the passport office, Ministry of Foreign affairs, which outsourced the entire passport renewal process years ago while staying in overall charge to maintain quality. Question is, what is the difference? The proactive Ministry of Foreign Affairs had outsourced the procedure - with compensation evidently based on output. Applied to Immigration, an outsourced supplier might require that prospective immigrants e-mail proof of return ticket, in country accommodation and fund availability a week or so in advance instead of reviewing the actual documents on arrival -- saving cost, time and tempers."

Okay, fair enough. I have heard this argument in the past. I think one is comparing apples and bowling balls when looking at for example trying to compare Thai Immigration's mandate with the mandate of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs specifically the passport control office. I myself have had my passport issued twice by the passport control people at the Ministry of Foreign affairs. It is an incredibly efficient way of getting your passport sorted. Quite honestly it puts to shame many of the western counterparts for that service quite frankly. A Thai national can go in there, get their passport renewed and off back to them if they pay for the expedited service, they get it done in literally a matter of hours; it can be done in as little as I think in some circumstances less than 24 hours. You can definitely get it done within a business week, there is no doubt about that and you deal with people in person; it is not a matter of the endless sort of whatever you want to call it the "Fun House of Meers" if you will that is trying to deal with anything online these days when you are interacting with the bureaucracy.

That said, comparing that over to the Immigration apparatus, I don't think it is all that fair of a comparison. And look, there is an adjudication function associated with Immigration that just isn't there with regard to a passport. With a passport, you are a Thai national, fine we issue your passport. You pay the fee, we do that. And if they are efficient in getting a passport issued they get some kind of bonus, that's great. That is not Immigration's function. Immigration is kind of supposed to be it is supposed to be messy; it is supposed to involve cases that don't always fit neatly into the boxes, that is why we have Immigration Officers, that's why we have duty officers at Ministry of Foreign Affairs facilities, at Thai Embassies and Consulates outside of Thailand. And again yes could some of it be made more efficient by automation? Perhaps. But I think the notion of outsourcing these functions is a bad idea if for no other reason than what makes me afraid is we end up with a 'worst of all worlds' scenario which is, when you can't get something done with the corporate side because it has been outsourced, you definitely can't get it done on the government side because they just end up pointing fingers at each other and saying "well you need to talk to  them, it's not on us to get this done", it is just a constant finger pointing exercise. At least with Thai Immigration as we see it and know it now, we know exactly what we are dealing with and they are also capable of making decisions which are based on exigent circumstances rather than just sort of cookie cutter analysis based on trying to believe that you can put Immigration cases on sort of conveyor belt and just sort of move it forward; that is just not how it works. So comparing Immigration to passport control or passport issuance is really in my mind not a very viable, not a very logical analogy when you look at things how they are on the ground when you are dealing with both passport issuance as well as Immigration adjudication.