Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing scrutiny, pre-screening mechanisms, basically just a whole smorgasbord of fun at Thai Immigration as we are seeing ourselves going into the low season if you will here in Thailand. On top of that, we've got a new Government in place, and it seems to be more focused on going after sort of foreign bad actors here in Thailand. That said, I thought of making this video after reading a recent article from the Pattaya Mail, that is pattayamail.com, the article is titled: Rising crime prompts Visa-free policy review impacting Pattaya's business and expat community. Quoting directly: "The Visa-free dilemma - If the Government modifies the Visa-free or Visa on arrival frameworks, it could introduce stricter prescreening mechanisms, mandatory proof of financial subsistence upon arrival, or stricter limitations on the duration of stay and consecutive entries (visa runs)."

So one thing that I have talked about pretty much at length is since we have seen the OECD rolling into Thailand basically through the what I call the Rump Coalition Government of last year, we have seen a push to create what I can only describe as man traps at Thai Immigration checkpoints, wherein they can basically cross-reference data from Banking and tax authorities while they have got somebody effectively trapped at Immigration be at an airport, land border, whatever, but basically you are there; you want to get back in or you want to get out of here, and there they are saying, "well, you actually owe this in tax or something". This hasn't happened yet, thanks to then Interior Minister Anutin Charnvirakul, now Prime Minister Anutin; he did actually sort of push this off, or sort of deflect this off when he rolled out the Digital Arrival Card. That said, it seems to me that there's an inexorable sort of momentum toward this. 

Exactly how this ends up, I would say it remains to be seen but there seems to be an element of foreseeability here. We know what they wanted to do. They didn't quite do it. It's sort of like the Digital Wallet. They tried to push that out in 2023 here, going into '24. Didn't really work, but now we're seeing all this banking - they call it Regulatory Compliance - but in my opinion it's sort of overreach nanny minder sort of paradigm and mechanisms associated with Banking in Thailand; I've discussed those at length. I think we may be seeing something in Immigration similar, where they did not get to do the man trap thing like they wanted to, but the elements of the same sort of mechanism are sort of coming together when we're talking about prescreening protocols etc. through Thai Immigration. 

Exactly how this looks, again remains to be seen, but I think we can see where the momentum is heading and we will certainly be keeping folks updated on this channel as the situation evolves.