Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing Thai Immigration Officers and their adjudicatory discretion associated with the visa application process. Now I have gotten correspondence all the time quite frankly that asks “why are Immigration Officers empowered with such discretion?”

Well long story short is most Immigration matters have a high degree of discretion compared to for example legal matters. For example, in legal matters if you apply the law to the facts and it meets the elements, most of the time you are going to, I won't say it is automatic, but you are going to see an outcome that you can foresee. In Immigration, there is a level of discretion in any type of Immigration. The United States there is US Immigration Consular discretion. We have gone through this in other videos, the Doctrine of Consular Absolutism. Their fact finding is not subject to review nor are their decisions. With respect to Thai Immigration Officers, yeah there is a great deal of adjudicatory discretion on the part of Immigration Officers and I think the reason for this is they are the primary fact finders. Thai Law even in the legal system, the judicial system, takes the position that the Thai Police are the primary fact finders for example. They are the ones who are empowered to determine what the underlying facts are. Now when a case, for example if it is a criminal matter, if it comes to trial, those facts can be disputed and one can put on their own case essentially.

Now the thing to take away from this video not to stray too far away is yeah they do have a lot of discretion and the question is "why?" Well the reason is there are always extenuating circumstances; there are situations that come up. Just the man on the ground needs to go ahead and deal with that and Thai Immigration Officers are empowered with a level of discretion allowing them to deal with such matters.