Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing whether or not Asia in general is less accessible to Western Expats. I am going to go ahead and put this on screen. I am not even going to quote on this, I am just going to read the headlines and kind of the byline. This is actually not from a publication here in Thailand, I will get to Thailand here in a minute. This is actually from the Economic Times, Chandigarh, Saturday 15 January 2022. That is the Economic Times, Chandigarh and it is in the pure politics section the article is titled: India granted fewer visas to foreign Nationals in 2021. Gave only 40,000 e-Visas and 445,000 regular visas last year. We will go ahead and make sure that gets on screen so folks can see that.

Again I am not going to get too deep into this because the thrust of this channel is not really India. We are all aware Thailand has had the Immigration system has been far less than optimal since March of 2020 as a result of the invocation of the Emergency Decree here in Thailand. I have done some updates where I could, where I felt like I could provide insight into other jurisdictions even though I am only dipping my toe in so to speak; places like Malaysia, Cambodia, Vietnam, even Laos, Myanmar too where there was sort of an announcement or a change that I thought folks might need to be aware of especially as it touched on Thailand. We talked about this and yeah just across the board I think Immigration into Asia has gotten far more difficult in the past couple years and now the question becomes, “Will this remain?” As we begin to put this situation behind us, will we see a lot of these policies become kind of sticky so to speak? I mean prior to March 2020, it was pretty darn easy for a lot of folks holding the Western passport, the Anglosphere, the West whatever you want to call it, basically just get on a plane and come on out to Asia in a lot of different ways. Since then, we have definitely seen a ton of changes to this overall paradigm and I kind of wonder if it is going to get easier. My general sense of dealing with US Immigration, Thai Immigration, any Immigration system, over time it does not get easier; that is sort of the general theme. Now you do have times where protocols will be put in place that will change things and in a way make things generally harder or more difficult and then that may be rescinded like what we are hoping to see sooner rather than later here in Thailand with possibly a rescission of the Emergency Decree of 2020 where we kind of get back to the normal. Again all of that remains to be seen, but yes I have seen situations especially in US Immigration where something will pop up, a policy will come up that will kind of radically make things more difficult. It will fundamentally change the process and then policymakers will kind of realize this isn't working or this isn't how we want this to work and they will just rescind it and then things will revert to the mean if you will. But over time, the general trend is Immigration gets more difficult; that has been what I have learned in roughly 15 years of dealing with this. 

So my only point with respect to this video is while in the short term I think it probably will get a lot easier for westerners to get into Asia, at the same time this part of an overarching trend is certain aspects of this may not change. Maybe little things, relatively little things but overall, yeah maybe things will get more difficult for Western passport holders trying to access Asia in the future.