The Brutal Banality of the Administrative State

Greetings From Thad Phanom

Me in front of Wat Thad Phanom October 27, 2023

After a brutal series of visits to Embassies, Consulates, Immigration and Immigration offices spanning three different countries for myself and my husband, I am relieved to say that at least I am finally in a position to post on substack again. The simple story is that Ka’s long awaited interview with the US Embassy in Bangkok for his immigrant visa was set on October 24, while my one year marriage visa to stay in Thailand was on a one month under consideration period. For reasons that are not known to me they cancelled my marriage visa and gave me a 7 day retroactively dated stamp, at which point I had to depart Thailand by no later than October 25.

My marriage visa to stay in Thailand has been a hellish series of administrative setbacks for a very long time. I don’t like writing about it too much because in mainstream channels I find that people subconsciously tend to automatically side with the state. If your marriage visa got cancelled you probably did something fraudulent to deserve it. If your child gets taken away by CPS you are branded a neglectful abusive parent. Any criminal accusation, even if you get out of the charges, carries a negative connotation. The rising brutality of enforcement actions is often hidden by people who suffer in shame and silence lest outsiders judge them.

In the case of my marriage visa for Thailand, the simplest explanation is often the correct one. Nicholas Creed’s post was very timely for me:

Thailand's Gift to Farmers: Debt Swaps For Nature

The simple explanation is that we live on land in Phuket which is under Por Kor titling, meaning there may be other ownership claims on it, and the military which has a small base nearby wants to expand and take the land. They have done multiple actions to make things difficult, from cutting our electricity to building a dam which blocked water into the reservoir, which the farmers a few doors down were using to irrigate their plants. The most obvious and brutal leverage they have, however, is pressuring the farang with a seemingly never ending charade of administrative nightmares on the all important visa stamp to stay in Thailand.

As Nicholas Creed writes this is all part of the Agenda 2030 plan to push people out of open areas and into 15 minute cities. It is a huge land grab that is being done under buzzwords like equity and sustainability. In other places they seem to be doing the land grab with a Maui burst or open carpet bombing. Thailand has a softer style:

Dweller evictions, land deed upgrades, and debt-swaps-for-nature

Link to article.

Agriculture and Cooperatives Minister Capt Thamanat Prompow on Monday told reporters that he has instructed the ALR secretary-general to meet with the legal affairs sub-committee to switch Sor Por Kor 4-01 papers into title deeds.

Once the upgrade is completed, the land can then be sold, something that cannot currently be done with land with Sor Por Kor status.

Capt Thamanat said the sub-committee agreed with the plan, and it will be implemented by the end of the year as a New Year gift for Thai farmers.

He also insisted the farmland, once converted, will not fall into the hands of businesses.

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Is this really a ‘gift’? Or is it a way to transfer more land from the indebted poor to the wealthy, whilst helping with government land-grabs to bolster plans to carve out the mega (SMART) city Bangkok project? Public private partnerships (PPP)?

So my husband had his USA visa interview on Tuesday in Bangkok. I think it went well relative to the situation: he was in there for almost three hours and they kept his Thai passport. His medical check is listed as pending and I am going to put heavy inquiries to both panel physicians about medical exemptions to Covid vaccines. It’s a travesty that this and about 42 other jabs are on their required list for immigration, but all of those ever expanding rules, regulations and restrictions are big business. All of these administrative officers still have comfortable jobs. The state and its power always seems to expand in size and complexity.

As soon as we arrived back at the hotel following my husband’s visa interview I checked bus tickets to Mukdahan on the border with Laos and we made the 11 hour bus journey overnight. We arrived at about 6 AM. My original plan was to get a hotel to settle Sprout the cat in and then go over the border with my husband. Although his passport is being held by Bangkok he can do a land border crossing to Laos with his Thailand ID card by paying a small 30 baht fee.

That got screwed up, however, by our early arrival. Quite frankly my brain was too overwhelmed to think straight. We’d been on a nonstop series of busses, taxis, tuk tuks, MRTs, BTS, subways and trains. I was working off about eight hours of sleep collectively in five days. As I was walking around looking for a hotel my husband got to talking with the tuk tuk driver about just taking us to the border. I told my husband that I was worried about the cat and he had this brilliant idea that he’d just stay on the Thailand side with all of our lugagge and wait for me to cross back in a few hours.

Had somebody told me that there was a processing wait in Savannakhet? Probably, but my brain had been too fried by the administrative state to remember. The number of papers and documents I have in both English and Thai language on these two different visas is about the size of a phone book. So I left my laptop with my husband, took the bus over the friendship bridge into Laos and was able at the Thai consulate to get an application for a single entry 90 day marriage to Thai national stamp. It cost 2000 baht ($60) on top of the 1800 baht ($54) I had paid to get a visa stamp into Laos.

I waited there for about an hour after they took my passport. “What you waiting for?” A woman questioned me.

“My passport.” I answered back. Phuket Immigration and virtually every visa office I’ve ever been to always gave me my passport back the same day.

“No not until tomorrow!” The woman exclaimed. “Come back after 2 PM!”

I freaked out. My husband was waiting on the other side of the border with all of our lugagge and our cat and I had no way to return to him. I frantically rode back to the border crossing as I thought he might show up to check for me. I had no internet or phone service now that I was in another country. I bought a Laos SIM card. I couldn’t call my husband’s Thai phone number with my new Laotian phone number.

Social media went around in a huge circle jerk. They had detected a new sign in attempt from an unknown number on my new Laos SIM card and needed to know if it was really me. All of the verification techniques failed at first because it always brought me back to another thing which either didn’t work (ie my phone number) or it was something like email which also detected a new sign in attempt from a strange number and country and also needed to know if it was really me. The substack app still worked but I cannot figure out how to post from there. I was never able to reach my husband directly. I had no idea where he would go or what he would do. The brutal banality of the administrative state had struck again. Performing an expensive and elaborate stupid human trick had forced a separation with my husband that didn’t need to happen. If this happens again next time I’m swimming over the Mekong River myself.

It was a learning experience for me. I will be writing a post regarding my thoughts on what to do to reunite with your family after a natural or man made disaster seperates you. Too many people are reliant on communication devices which might not work in times of disaster. It is extremely important to have a backup plan.

I got back over the border, even though the Laos immigration officer had to type something special into the computer to pass me through. I knew I was going to get grilled about the cancelled marriage visa stamp by Thailand immigration, because it looks very suspiscious. I choose the harshest looking most matronly immigration officer I could find. She gave me a new 90 day Thailand stamp with no comment. Ka was not waiting on the other side, nor was he anywhere around the Mukhadan bus stop. I was able to determine that he had taken a bus to the land in Thad Phanom in the morning. Messages started floating in from extended family in that area.

So we’re back together on the Isaan land. Unfortunately Ka informed me that he’d taken Sprout out of his travel bag at the bus stop and the cat had run off. The bus stop here is about 400 meters up the road. I will be putting up lost cat posters in the area tonight if I can find somewhere to print out photos of him. Sprout is a very handsome and rather distinctive looking cat with his half Hitler mustache, so if I sweeten the pot with a 1000 baht reward we might be able to find him. I hope so as Eliza loves her kitty!

Have you seen this cat?

Round two will be coming up next week with back to Bangkok. My feeling is that if I push things fast with Ka’s visa I will have a sympathetic ear. There’s no other reason I can fathom for the US Embassy keeping my husband’s passport.

This bureaucratic state has been growing like a cancer all around us. I think soon it might strangle its host. I sometimes wonder how much of an economy would be left if we took out all of the job creation of compliance enforcement…

Memes coming up soon…for now it’s off to check on our land. And for what it’s worth I desperately want a drunk karaoke night with the extended Sukwan family. TGIF…

Buy me a ko-fi