Thai "Immigration Queues" Still Plaguing New Arrivals?

[00:00:07]Hello, my name is Benjamin Hart. I'm an American attorney and the managing director of Integrity Legal here in Bangkok, Thailand. As the title in the thumbnail and the thumbnail actually going to go over here to Prach Prachatai English. That's @prachatai_en over on X. I saw this cartoon cartoon by Steph immigration queue at Suvarnabhumi Airport and that cartoon is at seeing that person stuff over the years. It's quite good. I I I like those cartoons.

[00:00:35]So, I thought I'd make it a thumbnail here. That said, quoting directly from a recent article from ASEAN Now, that's aseannow.com under the headline Suvarnabhumi arrivals face two to three hour immigration queues. By the way, the word queue, that's a very British term.

[00:00:50]Like in American and I guess that's its own dialect of English. We just say lines, but thought I'd point that out there.

[00:00:58]Quoting directly, foreign visitors arriving at Bangkok Suvarnabhumi Airport are again reportedly facing weights of two to three hours at immigration during some periods as stricter screening and staff shortages create bottlenecks.

[00:01:11]Tourism industry sources say the long queues have returned as a major concern at the airports with the delay affecting travelers first experience on arrival in Thailand. The problem is most apparent during busy flight periods when checks can build into lengthy lines.

[00:01:27]Tougher checks add time at the border.

[00:01:29]One factor is the government's increased scrutiny of suspected Chinese gray capital groups, transnational criminal networks, and the use of special fast-track services, according to tourism industry sources. The more detailed screening process means immigration officers need longer to process individual passengers. Arrivals whose information is incomplete or whose documents require further examination can add to delays, which then accumulate during peak periods. Yeah, I've heard a lot of this. And the other thing is, look, people don't really want to think about this, but they've made up all these new visas, and even the immigration officers have problems sometimes remembering what the protocols are associated with them, the criteria associated with them. As I've discussed in prior videos, the DTV visa, wholly a creation of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, was then effectively imposed upon the Ministry of Interior, which operates internal immigration protocols and checkpoints. And again, this disconnect can result in a lot in a number of different reasons and mechanisms for why we would be seeing delayed processing at the border.

[00:02:38]Again, I find it rather interesting that this is occurring during low season, when again, presumably there's going to be less people going through. Again, staffing shortages are also being blamed for the reason that we're seeing these backups in terms of lines, but I actually think that this stems from the fact that the current immigration system is so disorganized with all these different kinds of visas.

[00:03:02]They all have different terms associated with them. On top of that, we've seen a number of now border runners that are coming about as a result again of things like the DTV, also as a result of changes in the visa exemption system which we're seeing. It's causing a lot of people I expect to bounce out of Thailand right now because they want to come back and get 60 days before the new 30-day rule comes back into effect. So, again, I think there's a number of factors that are contributing to this.

[00:03:30]That being said, we'll certainly be keeping folks updated on this channel as the situation evolves.