Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, it might seem a little snarky but we are kind of doing a little bit of a comparison between Thai and American Immigration systems. I am posing the question: "Are we looking at the Triumph of Bureaucracy here?" The reason I ask this is here recently I have seen a number of in my opinion rather frivolous rejections where we have attempted to file a case, it has been rejected for in my opinion, very, very frivolous reasons and then we have refiled and it has processed through. I have also seen cases involving the issuance of Request for Evidence which in my opinion could only really be described as frivolous. I mean things that are so minute, it begs the question if they are even relevant in some of these situations.

But setting all of that aside, on the other side of this we have dealt a lot more in the Thai system with the creation of this so called Thailand Pass which can only be compared to what is called ESTA, the Electronic System for Travel Authorization in the United States. Quite frankly the Thailand Pass in my opinion is having a massively detrimental impact on the tourism sector here in Thailand as did the ESTA System. People don't really remember the implementation of much well frankly the implementation of a much more strict scrutiny standard associated with Section 214 (B) of the Immigration and Nationality Act in the United States pertaining to Tourist Visas resulted in a far lower number of folks getting Tourist Visas to the United States and being able to go there for tourism purposes. Simultaneously, the creation of ESTA created a lot of roadblocks for even people who were wanting to go into the United States on the Visa waiver program which begs the question, "how many tourist dollars were lost there?" In comparison Thailand, before this whole thing broke out going back before March of 2020, the Thai GDP, 18% of it was made up by tourism revenue and as we have discussed in other videos, we were looking in January of 2022, that number was down to more like 1.8% of overall GDP. That is massive, it was decimated in a sense. 

I think honestly even though restrictions are being pulled back here in Thailand, having the Thailand Pass remain still puts a drag on tourism numbers. People are just not wanting to jump through all those hoops and deal with all of that in order to get into Thailand. So all of this just kind of leads me to ask: "Are we just leaving bureaucracy in charge of policy at this point or has process become the policy?" I don't know the answer to that. It seems to me that that is the case. Now that said, I mean it is possible to navigate through this albeit in a much more circuitous manner and in a much more Byzantine way than it was in the past. That said it is possible to wade through all of this. Hopefully things will emerge better toward the end of this year. It remains to be seen. We will certainly keep you updated on this channel as the situation evolves.