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As the title of this video suggests, I am posing the question, “should Destination Thailand Visas be an issue in a possible upcoming election here in Thailand?” Now, as of the time of this video, it's not a foregone conclusion necessarily that we are going to see an election imminently. That being said, I'm kind of anticipating that it's likely to see a dissolution of the House sooner rather than later here in Thailand and then a snap election being called. Again remains to be seen and difficult to predict such things, but with the likelihood that we will probably be having an election next year, although exactly when remains to be seen, it brings up the question why are you talking about the Destination Thailand Visa? Well precisely because it was a political creation and it was a political creation primarily by the Pheu Thai Party and their faction within the last Government and then they pushed it even harder in what I call the “Rump Coalition” Government coming out of last summer.

Basically, the whole thing, the reason I don't like this thing is because of the way it was created. It was created for political purposes and most importantly, it's one of these things where it was left completely vague and everybody sees in it what they want to see, rather than looking at the actual law and the actual rules on all of this stuff and looking at it through the actual prism of legality and not the pomp and nonsense that this was espoused to be when it was created as they were trying to basically create a spike in tourism or "tourism"; it's hard to call these people who may be coming here to try to live here for five years, tourists, basically this was done in lead up to Paetongtarn becoming Prime Minister. It was intentionally done for political means. 

Meanwhile, Ministry of Foreign Affairs created it entirely exclusively within their own Ministry and then foisted it internally on Thai Immigration which has caused all sorts of problems not least of which is damage to Brand Thailand, as the foreigners who were detrimentally relying on the sort of vagueness of the Visa and believed the, again kind of vague, not quite promises but notions associated with it, and sort of detrimentally relied on that, and then, now they have a Visa that doesn't really quite work the way that they thought it would work. For example Destination Thailand Visa holders can't get bank accounts because they're not supposed to be living and working in Thailand. That's the point of the Visa; it's entirely designed for somebody who is effectively passing through. And when you understand the context of how it was created, initially they said, "oh we want to create this pan-ASEAN Visa". That didn't go over at all because all the local immigration authorities in all the different countries were like, "no, we have our own priorities"; that didn't get created. So again, this Government that came in, which by the way, nobody voted for a Destination Thailand Visa, nobody was looking for that, they just created this thing whole cloth and foisted it on the country. 

And let's be clear, as an election issue this is a viable issue. A Visa has been created here that in theory could allow foreigners to live here for up to five years without contributing anything to the country. Why? I mean again, they're not allowed to work so we're just allowing people to itinerantly sort of, how do you put that, like squat in Thailand? Why don't you call it a Squatter's Visa instead of a Nomad Visa, okay? I mean look, I know there are people that are going to get mad at me about this, but honestly, I naturalized to citizenship here. This is my country. I don't want to see it overrun with a bunch of people that have no reason to be here and aren't contributing anything.

This was entirely a politicized immigration initiative created by the last government. I want to know what the next government's going to do about this. About being flooded with a bunch of foreigners into Thailand who all they seem to want to do is make YouTube videos complaining about the place. And meanwhile, what was the purpose of bringing these people in? Are they working here? Are they contributing anything, anything to the tax base? And I'm sick and tired of hearing, "oh we spend money here? And? That's not a basis for Immigration Policy. And on top of that we're not some third world country in the Caribbean that relies entirely on foreigners coming in and spending foreign money here. Thailand has its own viable economy. We don't need that. Just like many of the things I saw the Shinawatras foist on Thailand in this last couple of years not least of which is a bunch of undo foreign influence from the World Economic Forum and things like the OECD and the attempt at a Digital Wallet to track and trace everything we do here, that would also put this country into 20% more debt to GDP ratio, thanks for that attempt. But now on top of that, we're getting flooded with foreigners that don't really have much of a purpose here, especially the soft power ones. What's that doing? “I'm coming in to learn cooking in Thailand and I'm going to be here 5 years.” Really? Is that good immigration policy for Thailand? I mean look across the board, I'm not saying DTV is bad per se and foreigners who are using it, I don't blame them.

As I've said many, many times if you're under 50, if I was under 50 coming to Thailand for the first time, I'd be at least looking at the DTV. Knowing what I know about it, I probably wouldn't go for it because at the end of the day it's not really a real status that I can figure out in any way. It's just again something MFA created and then foisted on internal immigration, and they have just kind of had to deal with it. Then meanwhile, again it's explicitly not work authorized, so the people that are here at contributing what?  I would understand if there was like a single 6-month Visa that just allowed people to come in and do this, but one that presumably could go out to five years? For what purpose would somebody be living here for five years? Now as I've discussed in other videos, when they created this, the presumption was you wouldn't be living here and they actually said that. And there's again all this ambiguity as to how many extensions you can get on it in-country, if any. There is also ambiguity as to how much possible aggregate time you can get on it during the 5-year period which is another point I have to make with regard to the opacity, the vagueness just surrounding this Visa that makes it again bad policy to begin with, that is resulting in bad outcomes for both the country and the foreigners who have relied on using the Visa. 

So I'm very hopeful in an upcoming election, specifically the Destination Thailand Visa will be discussed, and we will see some kind of solution to deal with this because this is bad Immigration Policy. My personal opinion is at this point we need an Immigration overhaul. I thought that was kind of a ridiculous notion maybe 3 months ago, when I first heard it. I think in the upcoming Parliament, it's very likely we could actually get something akin to serious Immigration Reforms because at this point, it's necessary. I get the foreigners' frustration with all these different visas, none of them seem to make sense; they're all contradictory. And then they create visas that really don't even make sense internally, their own internal dynamics don't make any sense because they weren't created with the consensus of the Immigration apparatus in the country to which it pertains. So again, if anything should be a political issue that I've seen from the past two years in the upcoming election or purported upcoming election, I would have to say Destination Thailand Visa would need to be high on that list.