Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing westerners in Thailand, hey we don't need any more Karen here. We are all stocked up. Why am I making this video? Well, I saw a recent comment on a prior video we made about the new Elite Bronze Visa and how that has been created; I've done a lot of discussion on that. I think the timing of that is interesting for a variety of different reasons from the standpoint of both tax policy here in Thailand as well as Immigration Policy especially in light of the so-called Destination Thailand Visa which was supposed to be this massive game changer, and these visas are issued for five years. Well, we're going to see come quarter one, quarter two of 2025 exactly what this entails. It remains to be seen; I don't know. Long story short, I don't know what this is going to ultimately look like, but I think it's interesting that in the discussion of the Elite Visa, this comment popped up, folks were talking in the comments. 

"Yes, I applied for the 600k 5-year, last year and left it until final days to pay for it, as the five years started immediately on payment." Well first of all, that's not true. The five-year duration begins with the issuance of the visa sticker, the actual Elite Visa sticker itself. The 5 years of membership, yeah that would commence at the moment you pay. But for Immigration purposes, which is a different thing, Elite Visa Thailand Privilege is a membership program - their program is one thing, your immigration status is another thing - and at the end of the day, no it's not the moment you pay, that the sticker is issued and then that's the date from whence that five years progresses. No, it'll probably be some days later, in fact it could be weeks later. It could be the date of arrival of you coming into Thailand if you get your Elite Visa at the airport. Again, that's something of a misnomer there. That said, quoting further: "..and I wasn't planning on going there for another 6 months. When I tried to make the payment, it wouldn't work. Then when I was able to speak to them to work out why, they told me I must now pay 900k under the new system as the old system had finished the previous day. I then appealed to the management," - well you didn't ‘appeal’ anything, it's not a court - "I then appealed to the management, who also insisted I must pay 900k, so I told them to forget it. An extra 300K because their payment system wasn't working was ridiculous." Well, no, no. It had changed, the price had changed. It wasn't because the payment system didn't work. Quoting further: "It looks like now their business is struggling because of greed." No, it looks like you were trying to game around the system and it didn't work the way you wanted it to and so you ran off and “appealed” to the manager and did all of this stuff, and nothing came from it, okay. 

We have got enough problems; I say this a lot here in the firm. I don't mind people that have problems, okay - I think I have done a video on it some years back - I have a problem with people who make problems, okay. It's like if somebody comes to us and they say I'm on a blacklist or I'm being deported or I need to convert my Visa and I need to do it in this time frame because I don't want to go into overstay, that's having a problem. Making a problem is doing things like gaming things around and trying to be smarter than the Thais. I see this constantly as a phenomenon here amongst the Western expats, is this constantly trying to not only “be smarter” but saying you're smarter than the Thais and you are just running circles around them. That's usually a) not the case, and b) why do you do that? We have got enough Karens here in Thailand on our own, indigenous Karens. Frankly, Karenism is in my opinion one of the big factors that is really corroding the West, I mean the thing that we know of is the West, Western Civilization, this Karenism of, 'I'm going to game around the system and then talk to the manager'. It's just a bad way to deal with things and quite honestly, if you're dealing with the Thai Immigration System, it is best to not try to act that way; best to not try to game things around and best to not try to “appeal” to management because you are just going to end up frustrated and frankly it leads to people then saying things like "oh their system didn't work", when in reality no, it was your little plan didn't go the way you wanted it to. You shouldn't say that the Thai system is somehow sort of, not in arrears, but sort of is not operating correctly when in fact no, it was the fact that your best laid plans of mice and men, didn't go the way that you expected them to go.