Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing Thai and American Work Permit policies or work authorization policies. I thought of making this video, I am going to go ahead and throw this up on screen. This is like a screenshot from Fox News apparently. It has been kind of making the rounds of the ether of the internet and you know me, I am kind of focused on Immigration matters so it came up in an immigration context. Apparently it is the bipartisan proposal on Capitol Hill to work authorize; that's the big solution to the problem at the border, the border crisis and all of the illegal aliens streaming into the United States, apparently the policy is "hey let's work authorize these people." 

Now I have talked to colleagues, folks who are American Immigration Attorneys back in the United States and I get it. I am not unsympathetic to the plight of so-called undocumented immigrants but let's be clear, the legal terminology is "illegal alien" and I refuse to change my verbiage with respect to that, because I deal with people primarily who go through the process legally. They have to go through what is a quite convoluted and Byzantine process of getting into the United States before they can ever even hope to achieve work authorization so to see illegal aliens going in and the big solution from Capitol Hill is to just work authorize all of them, I find it rather appalling. I find it rather galling and I think it is kind of insulting to folks who are from other countries that don't have the ability to just wander into the United States physically. 

So again, the thing to take away from this video first of all is you can clearly see I am a bit nonplussed by US Policy on illegal aliens and work authorization thereof. Thailand does not have anything akin to this. There is no way to just come into Thailand illegally and be formally authorized to work. In fact if you are discovered to be in Thailand illegally, you are going to be detained, likely deported and probably blacklisted. So that is the first thing to understand about that. Now one thing that I will compare Thailand to American Work Permit Policy sort of generally or work authorization policy is that Thailand does not maintain any kind of a quota system that I have ever seen. So if you are able to meet the requirements and legally come to Thailand, for example obtain a Business Visa, get a corporate sponsor or set up your own company and then seek work authorization that way, there is no real quota; there's no real limit to how many people can do that. Now admittedly, I suspect there is not nearly the demand for that type of documentation compared to the demand in the United States but I have often found that the quota for example on H-1B visas, highly skilled folks who want to work in the United States, I have found it a little bit disconcerting especially when you consider many of those folks are educated primarily in America; they go all the way up through higher education. I personally have witnessed the graduation of an engineering class specifically at the University of Texas at Austin where the undergrads, the graduates and the PhDs were all being graduated at the same time and when you got to the upper levels, it was almost all immigrants that were taking PhDs for example in engineering. Then it is my understanding due to US Immigration Policy, they were basically compelled to return to their home country rather than just granting those folks work authorization. They have been educated in the United States, the US should benefit from their education; it makes sense to me and those folks want to be work authorized to remain legally in the United States. So that is one aspect where I think American policy actually falls short of Thai policy on work authorization where here in Thailand if you meet the criteria, there isn't a quota whereas in the United States the quota is quite small really and the process of being able to even get into that quota is quite Byzantine and difficult. 

So at the end of the day the point I am trying to make is on Work Permit policy regarding legal immigrants, I think Thailand probably is on a better track or has a better overall policy when comparing it to the United States.