Transcript of the above video: 

As the title of this video suggests, we are asking the question if Thai Parliament should seriously consider immigration reform? I thought of making this video actually after reading a recent email from a viewer. Quoting directly: "I got this email yesterday from Thailand Privilege. Note the highlighted bits. Could be worth a YouTube video. We've always known that it is in the Tourist Visa class but now we have to "confirm that the purpose of our stay is tourism". So we are 20-year tourists"? What happened to this being a means of long-term pseudo residence?” Well yeah again, and this is one of my concerns regarding the LTR, regarding the DTV, regarding Elite. All sorts of things get said about these things, but they are attenuated from the actual letter of Thai Immigration Law i.e. the Immigration Act of 1979. And for that reason, when they say this stuff, the rubber sometimes does not hit the road in terms of practical usage of these visas when people are actually using them and that can cause a problem; I'll get to that in a moment. Quoting further: "I wish I had never bought this Visa. It seems that every other month it is becoming less and less Elite." I made another video contemporaneously with this one where I get into the fact that the Thailand Privilege folks are telling their people - it was a recent email that went out to their people - that said look, when you are coming through to get your Elite Visa affixed you have to go through all these hoops showing that you are effectively a tourist, and that none of your financial behaviour looks “non-touristy”, whatever that means. 

But again, the thrust of this video is not on the issue of the Elite Visa. The thrust of this video is look we have a Parliament now, and we haven't had a new Act on Immigration since 1979. Frankly everything was going along pretty nominally, like with regard to how the Immigration system worked here in Thailand, it was largely in line with the Act up until about 4 years ago when we started seeing them roll out all these visas that they just kind of created whole cloth. LTR is an example where they say, "oh, you don't have to do 90-day reporting", notwithstanding the fact that the Immigration Act itself says you have to do that, unless you are an immigrant. Well the only people that are immigrants have Permanent Residence, so what they heck is BOI talking about when it makes these statements? The other thing is I've never understood where BOI got the legal authority to issue work authorization unilaterally. I have discussed this in other videos. Yes, they clearly have the ability to create visas. That's noted in the Act of '79; it's actually explicitly noted in there. But again, work authorization is a different thing, and I've never been able to see, never seen anybody explain to me how their assertion is backed up by the letter of the actual law with regard to the fact that they say LTR Visas are work authorised inside of Thailand. How? It doesn't make a lot of sense to me. 

That said, and the point of this video is we have got the DTV; we have got the LTR; we have got the long stay. Now they are tweaking around with the Elite Visa. At what point is it not time for Thailand to get a comprehensive immigration reform through. A new Bill that we can all just look at the law, figure out what types of visas there are, and act accordingly, and operate accordingly, rather than this smorgasbord of, "oh, this Visa can do this, this Visa can do that", and all the legalities associated, sort of undergirding it are just sort of vague and nebulous; again the Long Stay Visa comes to mind with respect to that. The DTV as I've discussed in other videos, I mean one thing that caused the DTV there to be some, how shall we say, backlash against the DTV is the fact that the DTV can't utilize a bank account in Thailand on a DTV. Nobody said anything about that. Also its creation was nebulous. Its "work authorization”, such as it is, which isn't work authorization inside of Thailand so it's a sort of, "oh we're just turning a blind eye to what else you're doing". Again that's not hard and fast authorization. 

My only point with this, it is not great policy to create all these new visas that nobody can make much of hide nor hair of.

Meanwhile, it leaves Immigration in a bad position because they are having to deal with all of these different types of visas and situations and they have to adjudicate utilizing increasingly opaque, essentially legal framework for reissuance or extension or issuance in the first place. Meanwhile things like the DTV were effectively foisted on internal Immigration by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs at the time when the Ministry of Foreign Affairs was operated effectively by the Pheu Thai Party in the last coalition government, which wasn't really working hand in glove with internal Immigration. The point I'm trying to make is Thai Immigration is complex and Byzantine to say the least. It could use some streamlining and frankly we could use a unified Act that everybody could point to, the foreigners as well. This would be better for the expat community if there was just an Act they could point to and it says, "okay these are the rules, this is the type of Visa, this is how it works". It would be nice if work authorization was perhaps mentioned in there as well. When you understand the history of Immigration and Work Authorization, you know that they are two sort of stovepipe notions that operate sort of mutually exclusively of one another until you tie together a Work Permit and a Business Visa together, a standard Business Visa and Work Permit. 

Again, back to the point of this video which is I think it's about time Thailand looks at seriously reforming the Immigration System. We get a new Immigration Act in this newly consecrated Parliament, or I guess I should say convened Parliament. Wouldn't it be about time for that? I'd like to see our Parliament actually maybe do something with this issue, because otherwise it's becoming increasingly difficult. And look, I follow this constantly. It's what I do for a living, and I can't hardly keep up with half of the vicissitudes of this stuff where one thing can do one thing, and now oh we're changing our mind like with Elite, the paradigm is now "oh, we're going to scrutinize you as to your tourist intent on a Visa that you at least presumably could be here for 20 years at a stretch on. Okay? I mean the point being and the thing to take away from this video is it's about time we get immigration reform. We have a new Parliament. I think the timing is right; hopefully we'll see something. That being said, we will certainly be keeping folks updated on this channel as the situation evolves.