Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are talking about changes in rules and regulations pertaining to Thai Immigration. I thought of making this video after reading a recent article from the Bangkok Post, bangkokpost.com, the article is titled: Council urges effort to woo foreign retirees. Quoting directly: "Mr. Chamnan said the private sector agrees with the coalition government's vow to reform outdated laws and regulations especially in terms of cutting redundant rules that hinder tourism development. The second policy is to suspend around 1,400 laws and regulations that are proving to be impediments to business at present." So interesting stuff going on here and again we are probably not going to know exactly how this is going to play for another few weeks as the sort of political developments play out here in the now open Thai Parliament and we will certainly keep you updated as that situation evolves.

But yeah, I think it's safe to say the Thai Immigration system especially, could probably stand to be reformed in favour of a little bit more efficiency. Now that said, for those that understand the Immigration System, Thailand's Immigration System isn't that far off from the American one in the sense that the enabling Act that created both of them are quite old. With respect to the American Immigration System, the enabling Act, the Immigration and Nationality Act, that thing was promulgated I think under the Eisenhower Administration and the Thai Immigration Act was promulgated back in 1979 so it's been a little while for both of them and we have seen these regulatory structures sort of accrete and build up over time. Could we do with some reform? Yes. Is the system completely out of whack? Not really. One thing that does kind of worry me about the notion of reforming is every time that happens it has never been really my experience that things get easier. If anything they get more difficult especially here in Thailand in light of the fact that when they bring new laws and regulations online, oftentimes the apparatus is not particularly well suited to deal with it; it is just not conducive to dealing with it in a straightforward manner because it is new. They are just dealing with the raw law, they haven't basically created their regulations and their administrative rules to go ahead and actually implement the underlying policy reasons for those laws. So again, it is kind of a mixed bag. You want reform but then the upshot of reform can sometimes be even more complexity.

It will be interesting to watch as I said. We will probably going to need to see the political situation play out here in Thailand before we see anything further in terms of developments on this topic, but we will certainly keep you updated on this channel as the situation evolves.