Transcript of the above video:

The question posed in this video is "have Thai Embassies made the visa application process more difficult?" I thought of making this video after reading a recent email we got sent through to us here, quoting directly: "Dear Sir, I watched your program today with interest as I have lived in Thailand for over 20 years but due to parental illness back in the UK, I watch your program from time to time. Today was about visas, the online version. E-Visa a nightmare trying to communicate with the powers to be. The website is either crashing or I am being asked the same questions repeatedly. So much easier when the Thai Consulates were open; just pop in, complete the form and fee with passports, 3 days returned complete. But now if phoning the Thai Embassy in London to confirm an issue, very lucky to be accommodated. I speak Thai but this is to no avail, stressful so much so I get my daughter to do it, she's an IT executive. Anyway, thank you for your time, all the best." Yeah thank you for bringing this up. 

This is a good point. I have noticed this a lot, I have noticed this in US Immigration too. I have noticed this with everything. Big corporate does this as well whereas, "Well we have got a website." And I love this if you get in front of somebody after days, if not weeks, if not months of trying to set up an appointment to meet someone in person, you will get there and they will say "well you need to go online and use our website!" Hey guess what? Especially in a private context, okay Government is a little bit different but, hey guess what, it's not on me to learn how to use your system because I need something from you. Quite honestly, I think that goes doubly in certain ways for Government. Now Embassies are a different thing; they have their own prerogatives with regard to issuing visas and things and under what is called in the American vernacular, the Doctrine of Consular Absolutism or Consular Non-reviewability, largely their prerogatives are beyond review. I understand that on a certain level but can we get back to just self-evident humanity basically, where look, we need to be able to deal with one another, okay?  I understand bureaucrats of all stripes, and by the way there are just as many bureaucrats in big corporations as there are in Governments, you know as they say in pigeon English in Thailand: "same, same but different", but the point I am trying to make is it really is frustrating where everything now is "oh you need to go to our website" and then your website doesn't work real well. Or okay, I'm not familiar with it because how often do I apply for a Thai Visa or in the American context, how often is anyone going to deal with a  DS260; they have to go practically read an owner's manual for the system in order to use it one time. Is that a very good use of resources? I thought the purpose of the bureaucracy was to train people that we pay to assist the citizenry of whatever nation in whatever it is their desired goal is to get so long as it operates under the laws and relevant regulations and administrative rules pertaining to that bureaucracy. That is the point of having these employees employed, is to assist the public, not to tell them to go to a website. You can put up a sign that says "go to a website"; you just fire the person, now we don't have to pay the salary of that person who basically it seems their only function is telling people to go to a website. That's my only point sort of generally speaking on this. 

But long story short, yeah the Thai Visa process is a bit more difficult at Embassies and Consulates abroad than it was in the past. We are definitely seeing that as well. Another thing to bear in mind is in the past we used to be able to deal with these things through the Honorary Consulates which were much more streamlined and quite a bit more customer service oriented than you could argue certain posts are throughout the world today. The Honoraries don't effectively exist anymore; I think it has been about 5 years or more now that they no longer will issue Visas. So again, and I am sure I am going to get comments where they will say "well this Honorary Consulate does!" Yeah, I understand there are Honoraries out there that may still issue visas especially if there is no Embassy or Consul-General in that jurisdiction but I am talking about the bigger countries: UK, US, Canada, these kind of places where once you could process through Honorary Consulates but now unfortunately those are gone and now we have seen Thailand's Immigration system, at least in the Embassies and Consulates abroad, become digitized in such a way that especially for older people, this is not something that is overly easy to use. Unfortunately we have created a service in our own firm to assist folks with renewing their US passports for example and I have had multiple people tell me the reason they come to us is mostly because of this issue, having to deal with all this online and "we don't understand how the system works, it is very problematic, it is very cumbersome". Yeah I think it is interesting that the Thai Prime Minister came back from the World Economic Forum talking about how they want to go ahead and "cut red tape" at the behest of the World Economic Forum and they want to get rid of “exceedingly cumbersome processes” in the Thai Bureaucracy and then this is what they are doing. They are creating these online systems abroad for visa application that are more difficult to use than the old analog system ever was. 

So again, it just seems like bureaucracy can end up in its own little feedback loop and all of us in the public are stuck sort of dealing with it. I unfortunately am in a position where I deal with it constantly and it is something that we have kind of gotten used to but every now and again, I need to get myself worked up about the fact that honestly this is not the best way to do this.