Transcript of the above video: 

As the title of this video suggests, we are posing the question, are Thailand's, well Thai Immigration's ongoing digitization plans for Immigration matters, are these ambitious or are they kind of absurd? Why am I posing that question? Well I thought of making this video after reading a recent article in the Bangkok Post, bangkokpost.com, the article is titled: Immigration to be digitized with new app. Now we have discussed this before - I've done a video on it - it's called the THIM system and for some of it it makes sense, like basically the Digital Arrival Card, certain aspects of like the TM30 I can kind of see how it makes sense, but it seems they want to digitize everything. Quoting directly: "In the future, the Bureau wants THIM to become a comprehensive digital platform for all foreigners living in Thailand, featuring appointment booking, electronic extension services, online pre-submission of documents, status change applications and issuance of transaction-related certification documents."

This is a hell that we are going to be dealing with, and why do I know this? Because I have been dealing with it any US immigration capacity for quite some time now, especially so-called pre-submission of documents. We also are currently seeing this when dealing with applications for visas through the online system associated with Thai Consulates and Embassies abroad. It is just a feedback loop of bureaucracy where nothing seems to get done. The other thing is in the analog world where all this is done on paper, what once used to take a half day, a day, because you show up, you present your documentation - they may give you something of a run around - but ultimately, it's all happening person-to-person with documents. It's not this thing that can just drag on forever and ever and ever. These pre-submission of documents, online platforms associated with Immigration, both in the context of the United States as well as Thailand, have made nothing but the situation worse and this is coming from somebody who has worked inside of this for almost 20 years, so let's start from there. 

Meanwhile, electronic extension services and appointment booking: basically the entire 90-day reporting system currently has an online option, and talk to the people who try to use it from time to time, okay? It works sometimes, and it doesn't work a lot of times. All of this stuff is just adding layers to something that is already Byzantine enough and all it is going to do is strip away accountability, and at the same time, we have seen these systems in practice. I'm here to tell you, we have been doing extensions; I personally have been doing extensions - well up until I became Thai - and going back to, prior to 9 years ago when I became Thai, I dealt with this stuff for about 11 years, I'm here to tell you, I don't see where you are going to be able to do online extensions via the phone in any meaningful way, and where it's going to stick. And by that, I mean I know plenty of people who filed their 90-day report online only to find out later that the Immigration Bureau says, "oh no we never saw that." I can see a million ways where this isn't going to work out.

Now if you were saying, "well, we may set it for appointments, or this or that." Maybe. Again, have you ever seen the number of people daily that go to Thai Immigration Division 1 in Bangkok. Here is what we have seen ever since they digitized the Work Permit system, where once again you could show up to a government office. Yes, you had to wait in line a minute, but you got in line, you waited, they processed your documentation and then you got your Work Permit issued. Now, they only have a set number of appointments because there is a private intermediary now that says, "oh, we only do X number of appointments a day", and if you go after them for it, and you say to the government "hey what's going on?" - well they are a private company, they don't have anything to do with us." So where you once had at least some level of Government accountability where you could have somebody standing there at a counter and say, "hey what are you doing now?" it's just, "oh no, we have a private intermediary in between these things" and basically, it's an order of magnitude less efficient than we saw it in the past. 

Again it is possible they may try to do this. I don't see it working out very well even in the long term. I'm sure there are those that will say, "oh no, it will all get better as time goes on." I've been dealing with the digitization of the US Immigration System especially as it pertains to the National Visa Center in the United States, the paper system was unequivocally better by every metric, and the old system, where before you didn't have to deal with this veil of their website, which I'm sick and tired of showing up at Government Offices and them saying, "well you can go on our website". "No, I'm not going on your website. I'm here to deal with you. You say you have a mandate or I have a mandate to do whatever you are saying, how about you deal with me. Not put me through a digital intermediary where there is no accountability and oftentimes nothing ever gets done". I don't know how many times we have spun our wheels going through the National Visa Center system over the years for no good reason, when in the old days there were margins along the old paper filings and things where you could just note exceptional circumstances and things and on it moved, rather than having to sit through all of this.

Again, it's possible that this thing could make the system more efficient, but as noted in the title, I question whether or not is this ambitious or is it absurd?