Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are asking the question: "Should Residency be offered to wealthy foreigners?" I thought of this question when reading a recent article from the Pattaya Mail, that is pattayamail.com, the article is titled: Thailand continues to hunt for the super-rich "bleisure" traveller. "Bleisure" is this new hybrid of business and leisure traveller that we have discussed in another video. I urge folks to read this article. There is a lot of insight going on in here but this particular excerpt I thought was interesting and made me think of making this video.

Quoting directly: "Critics say that the Thai Government has many schemes on offer or in the pipeline to lure wealthy foreigners but none of them offer full residency or unrestricted ownership of freehold land." Quoting further: "Meanwhile, many overseas countries do offer full residency to foreigners and passports for sale upwards of $250,000 including some members of the European Union." Well yeah, I see that. I don't know the answer, "Should Thailand be offering full residency?" I don't know the answer is to that. What I do know is look, Thailand is not an EU country and Thailand is not a Caribbean Nation, like Saint Kitts which if you invest in property there, you can get a passport issued to yourself. It is neither of those things so I don't think they are analogous. You can't really compare a Caribbean country to Thailand nor do I think it is fair to compare an EU country to Thailand. In the case of the Caribbean, some of these countries in some cases really need Revenue and they are looking to generate Revenue. I don't think Thailand has that overall issue. Meanwhile, some of these EU countries can provide things like Residence Permits because they have the resources to support a large number of foreign nationals in their country just residing there. I am not saying Thailand can't support that but it just isn't either of those things so I think Thailand has to kind of make its own way with respect to this. I think they are doing a good job of it in the sense that notwithstanding the fact that a lot of these newly proposed visas as well as created visas like the Smart Visas as well as the Elite Visa, they can provide a lot of status in terms of the amount of time one can stay in Thailand. At the same time they are not residence, we have discussed that at length in many other videos. 

Point being, I just don't think it is fair to compare Thailand on this issue with some of these countries that are offering these residency programs in this kind of straightforward, essentially "buy residency" kind of manner. I just don't think it is fair to compare Thailand in that milieu.