Transcript of the above video: 

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing the review by Thai Parliament of the Free Visa or perhaps it's better put, Visa-free policies associated with Thai Immigration. For those who are unaware, there are a number of Visa Exemption Policies currently in place for about 93 countries. Many folks who are currently coming to Thailand on passports from those 93 countries can receive a 60-day Visa Exemption Stamp meaning they have lawful status for 60 days notwithstanding the fact that they didn't have to get a Visa. So they can just travel in and get 60 days on their passport. 

As I have discussed in a number of prior videos, they are looking at changing this and we have now seen a new government brought online here in Thailand and it looks like things are happening that could possibly change that; I've done videos on that. It looks fairly imminent that we're going to see the 60-day be brought back to 30 days which is what we had going back prior to I think it was 2023 or early 2024 when they changed that and now looks like they're changing it back. Again it remains to be seen but it looks as close to a foregone conclusion as one can get before something is finalized. That said, I thought of making this video after reading a recent article on Twitter, from the Thai Enquirer, that is @ThaiEnquirer over on X. Quoting directly: "Draft Government Policy to Review Free Visa, Introduce "Super License". Quoting directly: "Details of the draft government policy statement have been reported ahead of its presentation to Parliament on April 9-10, with plans to review the Free Visa scheme." So, there's more going on in there. I'm making another video contemporaneously with this one where I discuss this notion of a "Super License". There have been a lot of calls from the business community especially from the foreign business community to streamline certain aspects of legal compliance and licensing here in Thailand; again I'll get into that in another video.

But with regard to this, I was immediately thinking, I've been talking about this, the late great Barry Kenyon down at the Pattaya Mail over this past summer, before we unfortunately and tragically lost him to a traffic accident, talked about - and I actually disagreed with him at the time and made a video on that, I made a few videos on that - he felt like that there was a likelihood that when the new Parliament came in, they would be looking at possibly passing a new Bill with regard to Immigration; again it remains to be seen. At the time I thought that was unlikely. More and more I'm starting to think it probably could happen and possibly this review of Visa-free or free-visa policies may sort of be the pre-text or the spark that lights the fire to seeing a full discussion of possible immigration reform. As I've discussed in other videos, I think it's about time frankly Thailand really seriously looked at a reform of the Immigration System. I mean the Immigration Act of 1979 is very much starting to show its age. At the same time, over the past roughly four or five years, we've also seen various bodies with authorities that I don't even really understand insofar as being able to, like I do understand BOI has the capability to create their own visas. That's actually listed in the Immigration Act of '79; there is a specific category for BOI. But they have said that they can issue employment authorization where I have never seen the legal authority for that. They have also said, "oh you don't have to do 90-day reporting on those types of things" or TM 30 I think is thrown in there as well. Again, that is all mentioned in the Act and I don't see where BOI has the ability to overcome those laws unilaterally. I'm not getting into a debate per se or like criticizing directly, it's just I don't understand where the authority comes from because the Act is pretty self-explanatory. If you read it, 90-day reporting has to be done by anyone in a Non-immigrant Visa. The only thing that is an Immigrant Visa is Permanent Residence, so what are we talking about? And that's just one example.

There is also the example of this new so-called Long Stay Visa which has just sort of sprung up out of the ground like mushrooms and people are saying, there has been a lot of concern and frankly consternation amongst the local Thai communities about those types of visas because they are saying, "hey, we don't understand why these people are being able to come in and stay based on fairly limited reasoning is I think the thing. Okay, they bought a condo. But does that entitle them to basically live here forever simply because they bought a condo? I don't know the answer, but this is being brought up in the local community. Meanwhile, the DTV itself as I have discussed many, many times, the Destination Thailand Visa, again made up out of whole cloth primarily by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs at a time when we had a very fractured coalition government, and they didn't seem to gain any consensus from internal Immigration, and it has led to a lot of bad outcomes. People thinking that they had certain prerogative with regard to their visa that they didn't actually have; issues associated with banking; issues associated with people not understanding that the Visa is not work authorized for Thailand, although they effectively turn a blind eye to those who might be working on something that's occurring offshore. Again, it's a lot of opacity and a lot of lack of understanding. At first, when I heard Mr. Kenyon say that I thought it was unlikely for political reasons, and I was kind of ambivalent about the notion of doing it because quite frankly, every time Immigration Laws change, they tend to make things more difficult; it doesn't tend to get easier over time. 

That said, I do think that it's probably about time Parliament seriously considered a new law if only to streamline everything because at this point, the Immigration system is rather almost schizophrenic and chaotic in many senses with regard to all the Visas that just seem to be created out of whole cloth. Nobody can fully explain what the actual parameters of the Visa are, and I'm specifically looking at the Destination Thailand Visa when it comes to that because for political considerations, it was brought forward in order to make tourism numbers go up so as to make that Premiere who was coming into office sort of look better, and the aftermath of it is it was not very well designed, they didn't really have a consensus from internal Immigration so there has been a lot of chaotic situations arising for people who thought that they had something that they do not in fact have. The ongoing issue of extending that Visa. It was said at the beginning that you can only get one extension. Well okay, then does that require Border Runs? Now we've also seen the Border Running. Those who are using Border Runs are being scrutinized more. We're now seeing folks being heavily scrutinized in the Elite Visa categories for non-tourism-like behaviour. Again all of this is leading to a situation where we're not getting a very streamlined Immigration System that's good for Thailand and Thai people, and we are also not being particularly fair to the foreign community who are detrimentally relying on these visas in order to get into proper status here in Thailand.

So the thing to take away from this video is basically I think that they may be looking at this Visa-free situation probably specifically, but it wouldn't shock me if they start looking broadly at Immigration Law as a whole and I don't think it's outside the realm of possibility that we could see Immigration reform under this Parliament here in the Kingdom of Thailand.