Why Embassy Processing May Be Slow

[chris-pung 0]

Sunday, October 15, 2006

9:20am California (GMT-8)

Dear Forum:

I gained some insight to why embassy processing may be slow. At least in Thailand

I lived in Bangkok for 3 years, a year of which I managed about 20 staff on a work permit with a structural engineering firm. And, dealt with US Embassy on several occasions; most recently, last October, when we had to obtain citizenship for our Thai-born daughter.

Anyway, I discovered that U.S. Embassy prefers for Thai staff to handle as much of workload as possible. Thais are not known for their adaptability to English language, nor for their acumen toward western business practice.

Since NVC completed our case on September 26th; this past Tuesday, I sent an email to Embassy IV unit to check if they'd gotten the package. Answer: not received.

I emailed again on Thursday.

Answer was not promising, but most revealing: "We have not received the file from NVC yet. Please allow some weeks for the file to be arrived and done the data entry."

Reading between the atrocious grammar contained in that second sentence, I have a good guess that it wasn't written by American staff person. And don't anticipate rapid processing of our package. Ha-ha-ha.

But, This Is Thailand (the western businessman's mantra for maintaining sanity). So, I will be patient.

Best regards,

Chris