Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing "Have we seen a great reset in Thai Immigration Policy?" What are we talking about here? Well for the past couple of years I was telling people during the Emergency Decree when Thai Immigration had a lot more discretion, we were seeing a lot of things we have never seen before in Thai Immigration. I said "hey look, be aware, this is not going to go on forever." I know a lot of people that managed to stay in Thailand for prolonged periods of time, utilizing so-called COVID visas, various other, for example some folks use Volunteer Visas, various things and they were able to do that because of the Emergency Decree. That ended back in October and then here now we are starting to see as I have done another video contemporaneously with this one, there are a lot of delays now in Immigration, heightened scrutiny so I am posing the question "Have we seen sort of a great reset in Thai Immigration Policy?" 

I think that there is an argument to be made that we have and I think this may have profound ramifications moving forward. I think Thai Immigration is going to get harder quite honestly. I don't think the era: "oh it's easy, it's cheap, I just find some work-around, some shortcut!" that is I don't think how Thai Immigration is going to be down the line for a lot of different reasons most notably economically, there are a lot of shake-ups going on around the world. I expect that is going to cause some dislocation of people. I suspect Thailand is going to be acutely aware of that as they are acutely aware of massive influxes of people that have come in the past few months from different areas and Thai Immigration as we have noted in other videos and law enforcement generally have taken steps to sort of combat what they view as the more negative excesses if you will of having a mass influx of folks in the country. I don't think this is going to abate. In fact if anything, I really do think moving forward we are looking at an Immigration system that is going to be more difficult to deal with. 

Now for those who are going to get angry about this, especially Westerners who have been here, bear in mind our Immigration systems for Thais have never been easy. There are very few countries especially in a "Western" context, the Anglo-sphere if you will, folks in the English-speaking world as well as Europe, it is not just an easy thing for a Thai National to get on a plane and go to one of those countries. As we have discussed many, many times on this channel for example right now the US Immigration process is in my opinion is something akin to a quagmire. I mean stuff is moving through now but it is not great. The last Administration did a lot of things that quite honestly really just gummed up the works of the system and the present Administration, I think they are maybe kind of trying, but they don't seem to have, they don't have a fire under them it seems like to be doing much about it. So long story short it is not easy to get into these Western countries. I don't think it is going to be particularly appropriate in the future for Westerners to think it is going to be particularly easy to get into Thailand. Now I say that with one major caveat. Tourism yes. I think if you want to be a true Tourist to Thailand you are not going to have a problem getting into Thailand for a couple weeks, having a good time and leaving; even a month, a month and a half, right now it is still 45 days Visa Exempt for many passport holders coming into Thailand. But, if you are looking to live here long-term and to try and kind of game the system and do all this stuff, that era is over in my opinion and in fact those who are looking to get Non-immigrant Visas to live in Thailand longer term, are going to have I think more issues with that moving forward.