Transcript of the above video:

As the title of the video suggests, we are discussing nomads, expats and immigrants. Why am I talking about this? When you go out into the vast ocean of content that is YouTube, it seems to me that there are sort of three layers if you will, to the "travel space" and maybe I should have changed this title to Travelers, nomads, expats and immigrants, maybe that is what we will call it, I don't know. Travel videos are what they are. It is folks that go on vacation, they do videos, they may talk about how they came in, maybe some visa process, but it is kind of a traveler thing so we will kind of just set that aside. More the main thrust of this video is nomads, expats and immigrants because there is an element of at least, I hate to use such an oxymoron but it doesn't seem to fit any other way, there seems to be an element at least of a temporary at least permanence. To one degree or another, I think each of these terms has a level of permanence unto itself and an objective notion of permanence that may vary from description to description. What am I talking about here? 

For example a nomad is in my opinion someone who is constantly on the move but that is their permanent lifestyle choice if you will. They have chosen to be on the move, perpetually. I remember 10 or 15 years ago reading stuff on the internet. There was this, it was kind of before the whole nomad term caught on and became ubiquitous, there was this other term I remember reading called the "perpetual traveler", PT, is perpetual traveler they just constantly remain on the go. When I say permanence associated with that, these folks seems to be they are looking for, they are on the move sort of constantly or they have no problem picking up and leaving if a place they are at no longer suits their needs or they feel like it is not what they want any more they are on the go. 

Expats are a little bit more permanent wherever they are at in a truly objective sense of the term, especially compared to nomads. I kind of look at these folks as folks that have gone to a country from their home country generally. Maybe they have gone through another place but did some time there but they kind of view where they are at as where they are going to stay at least into the reasonably foreseeable future and they are not looking to remain perpetually on the go. They are transplant from their home country to the new country. Now the difference between them and immigrants, I think the difference between a nomad and an immigrant is pretty obvious, but expat and immigrant, it seems to be, I have seen a lot of things out there that says it is sort of a western phrase because westerners don't think of themselves as immigrants. Let me be clear, in interest of full disclosure, I do think of myself as an immigrant; I have for quite a long time. I did not necessarily think that way when I first came abroad. Roughly the first 2 or 3 years I was outside the US, I considered myself an expat where I was at, at the time because my presumption was I was going to go back "home", it was just a matter of if and when; not "if" so much, but "when". It might be a long time but at some point I thought that I was going to return back to the United States. As time went on, that mindset changed and when it really crystallized in my mind I just made the decision that in fact I was an immigrant and I needed to go ahead and act accordingly, regularize my status country that I had emigrated to. I deal with a lot of immigrants to the United States and that is basically their mindset from the get-go. Expats it is a little bit more, "yeah I am abroad but I intend to return to my home as soon as it becomes convenient or I feel like doing it or circumstances are such that I am required to return whatever"; the presumption is expats are returning to their home country. 

Now this is where the analysis on this gets a little bit nuanced because I think there are a lot of folks that consider themselves an expat when they have really veered over into immigrant territory and probably should go ahead and really seriously consider considering themselves an immigrant because they are doing themselves a lot of favours by sorting out their immigration status, I will take Thailand as an example, immigration status in Thailand because failure to do so oftentimes in a timely manner, it is really sad to see this when folks are getting ready to retire here in Thailand. They have been working for a major outfit over here, local or a multinational, and they have done X number of years and now they are saying "you know what? Now that I think about it I realize I just want to live in Thailand. Can you help me for example get PR?" And frankly, if you are already retired or you are right on the cusp of leaving your job, it can be very problematic to process that but if you come to that realization midway through your career and you realize "hey I have got enough time in, I can probably go for this. Maybe it is not a terrible idea to have that option out there for the future that I can be a PR"; that is a good idea. I definitely think it is a good idea for expats, in my opinion especially as the years roll on, to constantly reassess themselves and make sure that you are indeed an expat, you are in fact an expat and you haven't veered over into that immigrant category because failure to realize that about oneself I think can cause a lot of confusion and consternation for that person later on. Now different people have different things. I am not trying to impose my own paradigm on anybody, I am just simply saying when I realized that I was an immigrant, far less of an expat, I did have to change the way I was doing some things and it took a lot of time and resources to deal with getting regularized status but it was beneficial and I definitely think it will be beneficial longer term. 

Nomads, right now probably Thailand is not going to be one of the places that a lot of nomads are really going to flock to at least right this minute. The Government is trying to do some things to lure in so-called "wealthy" or "VIP" nomad folks and they may in fact end up luring some of those folks in. We have yet to see some of the rules that they are talking about promulgating with respect to certain long-term visas and things associated with those kind of folks. Again all of that remains to be seen. On top of that I do know that the nomad types are a little bit less inclined to deal with things like the really cumbersome Certificate of Entry process we are currently dealing with which we are hoping will probably be streamlined sooner rather than later. So I suspect nomads aren't going to be overly attracted to Thailand here in this last quarter of 2021 but as 2022 dawns, we may see things change rather quickly and as we have seen over the course of the last roughly 18-20 months, things can change rather quickly sometimes for the worst, hopefully moving forward for the better.