Governments Have Strange Rules (Part One of Many)

Last week I found I needed to fill out a few (well, quite a few) federal bureaucracy forms. The very best way to get such forms, here in Bangkok, is to go to the U.S. embassy. About 1/2 hour before it opens is a good time to queue up. So I got to the waiting room, the one for U.S. citizens, in good time. While I was waiting, a Buddhist monk came in.

This seemed a bit unusual. So, having not a lot else to do, I asked him if his appearance in the line to get into the citizens queue, instead of the Thai queue, caused any confusion at the front gate. A little, he agreed. He was at the embassy to renew his passport. This led to the question of just why a Thai Buddhist monk has a United States passport to begin with. Well, here's an interesting set of factoids. For those who believe that the U.S. has a lock on Strange Rules, you need to hear this. Once upon a time, this man went to the U.S.; Los Angeles in fact, to study at a monastery there. At completion of his studies (well, the study of a Buddhist monk is never complete, really) he was ordained in the order of that particular monastery. He stayed there, learning and teaching, for twenty-one years. All the while as a citizen of Thailand, with a Thai passport and a U.S. resident visa (the famous and treasured "Green Card"). When his order called him back to Thailand (watch carefully now), the Thai government swung into action. An interesting law in Thailand is that if you are a Buddhist monk, and you were ordained in a foreign monastery, you cannot be a Thai citizen! So, this monk was forced, by this peculiar circumstance, to become a U.S. citizen. Ahah! I love this symmetry. While the monk was once teaching in America as a Thai citizen with a U.S. visa, he is now teaching in Thailand as an American citizen with a Thai visa!
The reason for this particular law is clearly not easy to articulate. Logic clearly has nothing whatever to do with it. (likewise, logic has nothing to do whatsoever with the reason I had to be at the embassy, either). At a guess, this law is just a subparagraph of a rather byzantine set of laws that taken together form the Thai Citizenship Act. Under this act, there are a lot of people living in the Kingdom, some being members of groups that have lived in the land for many generations, who cannot become Thai citizens because they are not sufficiently 'Thai'. When some group is sufficiently persistent, they may get their status reviewed. One of the methods by which a member of one of these tribes may gain Thai citizenship is by passing a DNA test. I suppose if one has a Thai gene, it's pretty certain one deserves to be a citizen.
In any event, its quite clear that Thailand is completely up to date, and yields nothing in the way of bureaucratic tomfoolery to the United States.