A few weeks ago, we visited a Thai immigration office to get extensions for our tourist visas.  This is a pretty common thing to do for travelers who are staying in Thailand for more than a month and it requires a trip to one of the several government immigration offices around the country.

So we did our homework online, got all of our passports, photos, and photocopies together, and set out early to the office.  Not surprisingly, the place was very busy with foreigners requesting everything from simple tourism extensions to long-term residents and full-time students wanting permits to buy cars, stay another year, and all sorts of other things.  There were several intended process in the office , but it wasn’t exactly crystal clear where to go first.  Line ups were semi-formal and slow.   When you got to the front of a line, the working language between the employees and foreigners was English, even though for all of the Thai staff and many of the foreigners, English was a 2nd, 3rd, or more distant language.  Add the fact that air-con was so-so, and there was definitely the potential for big frustration by all.

Part 1: The Good

In what I consider to be a stroke of bureaucratic genius, the immigration office has put a card table at the front of the office and hired semi-retired, native English speaking foreigners to staff it.  That morning, three 60-somethings (2 Australian men and an American woman) were there like triage specialists, asking what you need, reviewing your paperwork, sending you to fill in any missing info, answering questions, and generally making sure that you have your stuff together.  Only when they have seen you do you take a number (deli style) and get assigned to a line.

I’m sure that this pre-screening process saves many “customers” and many Thai staff a ton of frustration.

And, by the way, what an awesome part-time job for someone who’s retired and wants to live in Thailand for a while!  The fellow who checked our papers seemed to have a fun time sorting everyone out.  He chatted with me about his relatives from Canada (“Is Victoria by Mississauga?”), grandkids in Sydney, and how he’d be back down to visit them during the Thai rainy season.   He then showed me where I had missed a signature and date on the back of a page and sent me to a side table to fix it.  “Then come back and see me” he said, with a certainty that was befitting the crisp Thai Immigration Officer shirt that he wore.

Part 2: The Bad and Ugly

So I fixed the papers and then came back into line.  In front of me was a French couple, maybe late 50’s, who were applying to renew their long-term stay visas.  They chatted with my new friend as he helped them with their paperwork.  Then, in a move that I’ve unfortunately seen before, the French man put a 100 Baht note into a folded paper and put the paper on the desk.  Mr. Officer smiled and said thanks, opened a top drawer, and put the paper and note inside.  Their papers were fine, they got a number, and headed off to the next step.

Are there fees for this part of the process, I thought very briefly to myself?  Nope.

Could that be?  Did he really just pay a bribe, equal to about US$3.30, to an Australian part-time paperwork cop?  I sort of smiled to myself, maybe half laughed, probably because I wasn’t sure what else to do.

Thailand’s corruption problem is real and its one of the issues underlying the current political turmoil.  But it is also far from the worst country in this regard.  The country is ranked 102 out of 175 on Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index ranking.  That places it a little lower on the list (ie. less transparent and more corrupt) than India or The Philippines and a little higher on the list than Mexico or Egypt.  (check it out if you want to see where your country sits: http://cpi.transparency.org/cpi2013/results/)  In the last 20 years I’ve worked in countries that are quite high and quite low on the list.  Aside from the moral argument against corruption, I truly believe that systemic corruption hurts a country’s ability to develop and grow in a healthy way.

I try not to judge lower-level bureaucrats in emerging countries who take small, commonplace bribes.  While I don’t condone it, I also don’t know how I would react if I was earning too little to provide security and opportunity for my family and someone offered me extra income for a seemingly victimless crime like preferential treatment in a visa office.  As with most significant problems, corruption is often complex and I have seen situations that I consider to be difficult calls.  No single country has a monopoly on what’s “right”.

But this seemed like a rather different situation.   A European bribed a retired Aussie with what amounts to extra beer money, while the Aussie is employed and empowered by the citizens who are hosting them both.  This wasn’t a “feed your family” dilemma, it was a smug “because I can” moment.

You may say that 3 bucks isn’t a lot, but of course that’s not the point at all.  This “tip” reinforced a practice that erodes confidence in the system from the bottom up, top down, and inside out.  Again, I can sort of get it if a hard-working local employee sees top politicians taking millions/billions and thinks “where’s my slice?”.  But these guys are just a grown-up version of drunk partiers in Mexico or Majorca, using the distance from home as a cover to behave badly.  I can’t imagine that either of them would try that sort of crap if they were in comparable roles in their home countries.

It’s like visiting a park that is trying to fix its serious litter problem and suddenly deciding that – because of the local environment – its now ok to smile, wink, and dump all your styrofoam in the duck pond.

Did I say anything to him?  I didn’t.  At first, because I was a bit dumbfounded.  But after…I don’t have a great reason.  Mostly because I did want to get our visa extension approved and didn’t want to risk having our passports held because of “issues”.  So yes, I was complicit in the corruption and therefore part of the problem.

So what exactly did Mr. French buy for his bribe?  Probably a few more minutes of his day and a reinforced belief that his Euro-denominated pension can buy him even more special privilege than the law says it should.

This incident wasn’t as big as, say, taking a Land Rover in exchange for awarding a bridge contract to an incompetent contractor and thereby risking innocent peoples’ lives.  But somehow, because of the participants involved, I found the whole thing more disturbing than a $3.30 bribe might otherwise be.