Transcript of the above video: 

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing foreign "travel agents" in Thailand. Frankly this video should probably be made a little bit broader than that but travel agents kind of drives home the issue. I'll get to that here in a minute. 

I thought of making this video after reading a recent article from the Bangkok Post, bangkokpost.com, the article is titled: Over 2,000 foreign nationals nabbed, Labour Minister says. Quoting directly: "The Department of Employment's Director-general, Somchai Morakotsriwan, said the Department will increase its focus on investigating groups of foreign workers who take jobs reserved for Thai nationals such as travel agents, tour guides, masseurs or barbers." Also, I'm just going to throw this out, I've discussed this in other videos. They need to be looking for foreign so-called legal professionals and tax advisory folks and all these people claiming to be able to provide these sort of qualified services that only a Thai can provide per the Restricted Occupations List here in Thailand. I'm not going to go on and on about that like a broken record, but I have discussed it in the past. I know Labour Ministry seems to like to focus on these more sort of ground level if you will sort of jobs - like Travel Agents and barbers - and I get that, and it is an issue, because a lot of foreigners do come in and try to take those jobs, so I'm not taking away or diminishing the fact that that is necessary. But remember, there are other white collar jobs that are targeted by foreigners here in Thailand and they basically push out the local market; they basically push out the local operators; they operate at the expense of the locals. And longer term, this in my opinion should be a higher priority, well maybe not a higher priority, but as high a priority as those jobs which may be "further down" the socioeconomic strata although I don't think of it that way. But at the end of the day, there is a reason for these restricted occupations here in Thailand and it is to protect Thai livelihoods. 

As I've discussed in other videos, the notion of a rice bowl; don't mess with people's rice bowls, well that's a real problem when you have a massive influx of foreigners coming in who are basically pushing out if you will, in much the same way the tilapia were introduced into the ecosystem here and are having a terrible negative impact on that ecosystem because these foreign fish are now eating a lot of the indigenous population. This same problem can occur with foreign labour and I'm not just talking about foreign labour, again at the ground level. We also can be talking about white collar labour as well as all kinds of other, various aspects of the hospitality industry, various like artisanal sort of trades and professions that are out there that are protected and are reserved to Thais for a reason, because again it's based on the fact that in the old days, Thailand had to fend for itself. And really I would argue even to this day, Thailand has to in my opinion ruthlessly pursue the national interest and it's pretty clear to me the national interest in Thailand or at least one of them, at least with respect to the Ministry of Labour, is definitely, definitely protecting the livelihoods of the locals here in the Kingdom of Thailand.