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As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing Thai Work Permits. I thought of making this video after reading a recent comment on our channel, quoting directly: "Could this possibly mean that Work Permits will start to "conform to the digital economy"? YouTubers, Digital Nomads and people like me own a business outside of Thailand that I manage remotely from wherever I am, could sign up and pay our share of tax revenue but can't do that if we can't get a Work Permit for the type of work we do." Well first things first, Thai Work Permit regulations aren't going anywhere and I'll get into my personal take on that here in a minute. Long story short, there are methods of dealing with this. We assist many folks, Digital Nomads so-called, folks that want to be based here in Thailand but work around the region. A small company, a small business can be set up which can be narrowly tailored to assist folks in exactly this position. But, at the end of the day Thailand looks inward and again you have a business outside of Thailand, that's great. It's really irrelevant to the analysis the Thai Immigration and the Labour Department are going to put on your presence here in Thailand. I hesitate to get overly, overly, I don't know what the right word is here, overly annoyed if you will, I am not even annoyed but I don't mean to sound condescending or like I am telling people what to do, but look at the end of the day a foreign national does not have the right to reside in Thailand; they don't have the right to work in Thailand; they don't have those kind of rights. So this kind of attitude like "well Thailand needs to go the extra mile to get me", that's not going to happen and quite honestly it shouldn't happen. Me as a naturalized Thai, I don't think it should happen. If you want to be in Thailand you need to conform to Thai rules, it's not the other way around. Thailand doesn't conform to you, it's you need to conform to the way things work in Thailand, that's how I see it. 

Now I do understand that there's all this notion of you need to go to the places that are going to be treating you like you think you need to be treated and all this, well that's great but you know that's kind of in my opinion simplistic and really not even realistic thinking quite honestly. I mean at the end of the day, Thailand's one of the major industrial powers in Southeast Asia; it's one of the oldest civilizations on the face of the earth. This isn't a place that needs to accommodate you necessarily and again I am not trying to be overly condescending but Thailand has had to weather a lot of storms over the decades and centuries and protecting its own workforce and protecting its own society goes along with that. 

So again I totally understand people's concern about hey can we kind of you know, the Immigration Act of 1979 it is very reflective of its time, I would say that is a pretty fair statement but it is still the Law here and it is what it is and the rules regarding Work Permits are what they are. Now could Thailand, Officials here, could Parliament maybe make some changes or could we see some regulatory change? Might not be a terrible idea but at the end of the day this is the system we have to deal with and I am here to tell you work authorization isn't going to go anywhere. Thailand is going to continue to protect its local workforce pretty much into the future.