Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing the notion of Expat input into matters pertaining to Thai Immigration.

This came to my attention in some recent correspondence I am going to go ahead and quote directly from: "I am very much convinced that Immigration are not acting in bad faith. I have "defended" them repeatedly in correspondence with you, (that's me) and in conversations with Expats. Still, I think that they could do a much better job on their online platforms, (we have definitely been seeing a lot of feedback on that) maybe they should hire some Expats as consultants. Alternatively or additionally, they could conduct an opinion poll on a volunteer basis. When one files a 90-day report in person or online, one is asked to complete a survey with questions like: 'what do you think of our systems?'' 'how could we improve them?' etc." 

Well, yeah I definitely think that could provide some positive feedback. The problem is, I won't necessarily say they don't care, I think they do. Immigration authorities, this is the world over I think, but I am going to look at this primarily because I deal with them all the time, Thai or US or even in certain cases we do sometimes deal with Cambodia, Malaysia, there is a dual thing going on here. On one level they do have to deal with the public and they have to maintain a certain professional courtesy but another thing to bear in mind is their job is to some extent thwarting folks trying to get into a country. Now it is thwarting folks operating in bad faith. Presumably folks that qualify for entry, especially tourists, Thailand really I think if they had their druthers they would love to see the tourists return, but just in a general sense, Immigration is not particularly designed with a "customer is always right kind of mentality".

So do I think that this is very likely any time in the near future? Probably not. Do I think that they could help? The notion of having consultants, I don't think that is overly feasible but the notion of maybe having some kind of feedback mechanism where people can provide some input as to what their experience was like or maybe how things could be improved, perhaps. Again, that really isn't their primary function so I think it is probably a long shot that we would actually see this but you never know; dare to dream!