Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing whether or not Immigration Bureaucracy or the state of Immigration Bureaucracy right now here in early April of 2022, whether or not it is a “moot point”. I got to thinking about this reading an article from the Pattaya Mail, pattayamail.com, the article is titled: Thailand's tourist entry rules aren't worse than her regional rivals. Well it is a good point that the author here makes. I urge those who are watching this video go check out that article, it is a good point the Pattaya Mail makes that yeah it is not the worst in the region and maybe I framed it in a little bit more dire frame than it needed to be in the last couple of weeks mostly in comparing Philippines, Malaysia, Vietnam, Laos and Cambodian Immigration policy to Thailand's. All things being equal, Thailand is kind of on par although I do have to say from what I am hearing from correspondence from folks out there, it is not so much the requirements themselves, it is the degree of frustration and exasperation people feel just going through these processes. I am here to tell you we deal with it a lot and if we frankly weren't getting paid to do it, I would hate it. I don't love it to deal with US Immigration, Thai Immigration, all the little pedantic steps you have to go through but we will do it because that's our job but if you are just a regular person who wants to go on holiday, to go through these hoops; fill all this stuff out; deal with this documentation in a system you don't really understand and you kind of have to teach yourself how to deal with it, is that really a holiday you want to go on? We have discussed this in other videos.

In any event I just want to quote this quick excerpt. I urge those who are watching this video go check out the article, again pattayamail.com: Thailand's tourist entry rules aren't worse than her regional rivals. "All in all, the generalization that Thailand is more bureaucratic in entry procedures and is less tourist-friendly than other regional countries is at best a moot point." How? A "moot point" would suggest that this is well settled, it just doesn't matter anymore. We are in the thick of this right now. Thailand has changed rules in the last six weeks multiple times and presumably they are going to change quite a bit based on announcements coming from various authorities here in Thailand, announcements that things are going to change fundamentally between now and July and now and before the end of the year. I think we are very much in play. A moot point is a case that no longer matters. In Constitutional Law when we studied Constitutional Law in Law School in the US there is rightness, standing and moot. Those are as I recall the first three things you learn about in Constitutional Law. Does the person have standing to bring a case? Are they involved in the case or controversy? Is the case right? Rightness has, for example if a law has yet to come into effect it may not be right for adjudication because the law doesn't exist yet; it hasn't become effective yet. A law becomes moot or a matter becomes moot if for example, the big one I remember with mootness involved the Alien and Sedition Acts back in the United States and they had a sunset provision whereby they expired; they just stopped existing. The Courts in many cases when they finally got into Court they said ‘”well this law is no longer applicable, it is no longer in effect so the case is moot”.

Well all of these rules are currently operating right now in Thailand; things are changing on a rapid basis; we are still dealing with restrictions to come into Thailand, a number of restrictions and we are dealing with a number of extra steps that we never needed to deal with in order to get into Thailand or into other countries. So I don't think it is really fair to call anything that is going on right now in the Thai Immigration system, "Moot"!