Transcript of the above video: 

I have made some videos lately that have gotten some mixed reviews from folks and a lot of comments from in my opinion some people who at best kind of are annoying and whatever, but long story short, look I'm not going to sort of beat around the bush on this. If it's not clear from some of my prior videos, no I don't like the Destination Thailand Visa for a variety of different reasons. 

First and foremost, the way it came about, I think there's going to be a real problem with this because I think it has created a lot of unrealistic expectations in the minds of the foreign public who are going to be using it here in Thailand. And it's been touted, and I'll get into this in a little bit more depth here in a moment, but it has been touted as this like 5-year visa and that's just not what it is. Even on its face, that's not what it is; that has been kind of glossed over. That part of it rather bugs me on a certain level. 

The other thing is there has been a lot of this going around lately of like people just sort of popping off and saying, "oh we can do this, or that’, “we can grant work authorization," well who gave you the authority to do that for foreigners? And they have kind of done the same thing with Destination Thailand Visa where again they like glossing it over and saying "hey, you can work on this visa in Thailand." Well in point of fact as we discussed in other videos, and I quote Ministry of Interior has said "you can't work in Thailand if it impinges on the Thai economy." Well that's pretty broad. Yeah, have they relaxed certain things having to do with 'can you jump on a phone call or your laptop to talk to somebody about something going on with your company when you happen to be on vacation here?' Yeah, no, that's not going to be a problem; they're not going to kick down your door over a Work Permit violation but in glossing over that issue, they are leading people to believe that they can just use that Visa to come here and live and work full time and that's simply not the case. 

Now again going into a deeper drill down here, it gets into something that at first I didn't really want to think was the case but now I'm starting to say "you know what? I've got real problems with this because it looks like it is just one of a broader policy or one of many in a quiver of policies if you will - think of an arrow quiver of policies - from this World Economic Forum and this Davos crowd and this nonsense. One of their key MOs, Modus Operandi, seem to be bringing in people from outside of different countries and basically collapsing out their local labour markets, causing disturbances in their local countries from people that aren't culturally the same as the people who are native inhabitants of these different countries and I don't think that there's any sort of economic strata to look at and say "well if they are coming from one country they're good, if they're coming from another place they're bad", - no we are just seeing large amounts of people displacing themselves into another country for no appreciable reason. Again, Thailand doesn't, it's not like, again they are calling them migrants in the West, over here nomad seems to be the buzz word of the day if you will. Again bear in mind, this is really creepy the way it's being done. In effect, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs is trying to force this whole thing on Thailand and they are having people believe that they are getting a Visa for 5 years and I got a problem as a Thai - especially as a tax paying Thai citizen - I have serious problems with the fact that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in this country is going around telling people "oh you can just come on in and live here for five years" with no real vetting and no real work authorization and just do whatever you want. What? Are you trying to get us invaded? Are you trying to do what the West has done and let itself be invaded by outsiders? I get it. It's different somehow because they're Western migrants or they're not migrants, they are “nomads” because there's all this different language. If they come from the West, if they come from the old colonial powers they're not immigrants. I've always considered myself an immigrant and I'll be here to tell you, immigrants are the first ones that believe in the Immigration System, because they know why it's there, they know what it has been created for. 

The point I'm trying to make with this is I'm not saying the DTV is going anywhere; I stand by what I've said, let's wait till quarter one and quarter two of 2025 to see what happens, but I have got to tell you, as a Thai, I find it concerning that my own Government has no problem with just allowing people, it doesn't look like they're particularly vetting a lot of these people depending on where they are coming through, I have got a real problem that my own Government wants to just let people in. And meanwhile, their solution to this so-called problem, which they created by the way, is to then institute this Electronic Travel Authorization which again just ring fences Thailand, hurts the Tourism Sector, but what does it do? It reinforces the notion that we have to have this totalitarian system because that's the answer to the problem they created by letting in a bunch of people that aren't being particularly vetted and to my mind look like from a demographic standpoint, they could subsume Thailand on certain levels. Meanwhile it's clear - I've disgusted it in other videos - they don't seem to have any particular respect for the restricted occupations and things here in Thailand. The point being, at the end of the day and we discussed it at the time, they just rushed this out there was a huge PR blitz, I get why, we want a strong high season, I want that too. I'm not anti- immigrant, and I'm not saying that something like the DTV couldn't exist in theory. We've seen other iterations: the Smart Visa for example, there are other examples of how to do this, but it looks a lot to me like this is another one of those policies that we've seen for the last 10 years, but we have only seen roughly in the last one year rollout here because it's this Davosian, WEF stuff and it looks to me like although it's not the demography of people that perhaps in other countries is where this migrant issue is arising, what does the demography matter? Is invasion not invasion on its face? I mean I am not exactly saying that's what's going on here, but if we just open up the floodgates and say "hey anybody can just come into Thailand", and by the way the only sort of for lack of a better term, the obstacle or the only adjudicatory check and balance or check on these people coming in is just the Ministry of Foreign Affairs who seems perfectly happy to just throw their hands up and let anybody in any way and keeps talking about "oh it's extendable" or "oh you can constantly use it over five years" notwithstanding the fact that the Ministry of Interior hasn't said a word about this and they are ultimately the ones to make decisions regarding who can remain in Thailand on a long-term basis as well as who can be admitted at Immigration checkpoints when coming in to Thailand. 

So, the point I'm trying to make with this video, I don't love the DTV for a variety of reasons. One of the reasons is it's been touted as something that it isn't, at least on its face. Then meanwhile, even if it is what they say it is and okay people can just come here now and live here for 5 years with no particular great vetting and can just be work authorized, come live in this country, I mean that's it? We're just going to let people just come in at 5-year intervals, and just live here? That to me is just a recipe for disaster in the long term.