Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing the notion of whether or not Thailand should create Immigration Courts. I was talking to an American colleague regarding US Immigration about a week and a half ago and we were discussing the Immigration Court System, especially how it had been overcrowded in the past few years, it had gotten clogged up in a certain way and just generally discussing Immigration Court system. In the aftermath of that conversation I was thinking to myself "hey, should Thailand maybe think about an Immigration Court system?" Obviously I am just thinking out loud here but it is an interesting point to posit; I think it actually could be a major benefit to the overall Immigration apparatus. 

For those who are unaware, for example in the United States there are Immigration Courts and if you are getting deported there is a certain level of due process associated with the Immigration Court. They are interesting Courts insofar as they operate under Article 1 of the Constitution not Article 3, so Immigration Court judges are not like federal judges in the federal judiciary. They operate directly under the auspices of the Executive Branch and that is a little bit of a different function. By and large they have an adjudicatory function like any other court and there is an appellate system. You can go up to BIA, the Board of Immigration Appeals and all of this just exists. My thinking was should Thailand maybe think about something akin to this. In certain ways I think it could be a major benefit. As it sits right now, in point of fact Thailand doesn't have a really organized system for deporting folks. Yes there is an enforcement apparatus. We have done a number of videos on this channel regarding that and how folks can be arrested and deported; how they can be found to be in overstay. For example with overstay, I don't really see, well Immigration Courts in the United States do adjudicate matters regarding overstay; that might be something an Immigration Court could deal with. There is a due process system in Thailand. We have done some videos on this. There is a commission that can be appealed to if one is being subjected to deportation. More often than not, what we often see with respect to folks who can't maintain status here in Thailand is they oftentimes are just not renewed on their Non-Immigrant visa.

Another point of this is what about folks who might get blacklisted as a result of being deported? My thinking on this is where the rubber hits the road in my brain regarding Immigration Court is it might not be a terrible idea because the Blacklist can have a lot of finality and frankly finality that might not necessarily be deserved on the part of the person who inadvertently, the thing that I have seen that is sad since they have instituted the blacklisting rules and that is going back 5, 6 years now they put that in, when the blacklisting rules first came into effect and they still are here with respect to this. For example, if you are on one day overstay and I have seen this happen and you get apprehended or you have a dealing with a police officer you could end up being deported and end up having a 5-year blacklisting just from a 1-day overstay. I actually saw this in the context of a traffic accident. Somebody was in overstay, I think was like 3 days, they were in a traffic accident. They got pulled in to the law enforcement system, it became clear they were on overstay. The matter was referred to Immigration and they were deported and they got stuck with a 5 year overstay and they really weren't an otherwise bad actor. To me it seems like having a Court to be able to tell their side of the story and maybe ask for some level of Amnesty or some kind of remedy in the form of not being, for example not just deported maybe deportation is in order but having a blacklisting that last 5 years for a 3-day overstay that seems like overkill to me. 

Now Law is Law and the way it is applied in practice is it can sometimes happen where it is a harsh reality that comes out at the end but an Immigration Court I could definitely see a scenario where they could have a mitigating impact on some of these more extreme outlying circumstances and end up creating a lot of value for especially with respect to sort of like a better term goodwill on the part of foreign nationals looking to vacation here, live here long term and at the same time it would also create in my opinion a stronger substructure of a legal system associated with Thai Immigration.