Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing the Thailand Elite Visa and I'll get into an article that got me to thinking about making this video in a moment, but yeah Thailand Elite has always kind of been an interesting for lack of a better term program, insofar as it's original incarnation looked very different than what we deal with now. But the whole premise of it has always kind of nagged in my brain a little bit because it has this, okay you join, you pay this amount of money - presently now a 5-year membership costs 600,000 baht, that is roughly US$20,000 somewhere in the neighbourhood of that, maybe a little less than that but not insignificant; it's more than 15 grand to join a program that results in getting a 5-year visa issued. Now there is nothing wrong with that it per se but it does strike rather the odd note if you will when you look at that and you say “well it is people basically buying a Visa.” Now there are investment based Immigration options in many countries throughout the world; again per say I am not necessarily against it but there are some things that bug me a little bit about it, I'll get into it.

I thought of making this video after reading a recent article from the Bangkok Post, that is bangkokpost.com, the article is titled: Elite Card in the hot seat over scandal. Quoting directly: "Tourism and Sports Minister, Phiphat Ratchaitprakarn asked the Royal Thai Police to investigate the accusation against members of Thailand Elite Card that have been linked with shady Chinese businesses." Quoting further: "Mr. Phiphat said the case badly affected the image of the Tourism Ministry and Thai Tourism industry as a whole. He said that during the application process, Thailand Privilege Card (TPC)," (let me get into this in a moment, I will come back to that), quoting further: "the operator of Thailand Elite Card, will send personal data of applications to the Immigration Bureau and the Department of Consular Affairs to screen for criminal records." Okay, the thrust in this article was, and I urge folks who are watching this, go read that, a lot of detail in there, good information. The thrust of it seemed to be look, background checks, there needs to be more stringent application of background checks, making sure folks that are coming in on Elite Visas are not criminals and also making sure that they are not coming to Thailand and then engaging in illicit or criminal activity. So that's kind of a different way of looking at this. 

My kind of thing about it is, at least I think it's worth a rethink, again Thailand Privilege Card, TPC, the operator, what they don't quite parse out there, they don't pull out of that there is that's a private company. There's a private company that has this special concession with regard to these Visas. I am not saying that's necessarily the wrong way to handle things. In many ways sort of public - private partnerships can be the most effective way of dealing with these things but it does seem a little odd that for any other Visa category, I'm not talking about agents or anything, I am just saying on an individual level you just interact with the Government. If you need to get a Business Visa for example you are going to interact with the Government. Now you may decide to hire someone to assist you but at the end of the day it's interaction with the Government. With this, it's this weird kind of you go through this private entity and then they kind of deal with the Government. At this point, I kind of wonder if it's not worth again rethinking, I am not saying I have the solution to this, but possibly rethinking the whole thing and saying, if the problem is that they are saying "oh there's not enough background checks, essentially the Government needs to do more", which that's going to be presumably who does this, and so that means public resources are going to be utilized to that end, shouldn't we maybe just move over the function of issuing these things or the whole program into the Government. Why is there this sort of private thing in the middle? I don't really understand it. If it's the Government's prerogative and if it's the Government that ultimately, and by the Government I mean Immigration Office, if it's them that has to do this, why shouldn't they just take it all over? That's my question.