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As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing Expats as "wagon pullers". What are you talking about Ben? Well, going back years ago I remember, a little bit of personal stuff here, I am a little bit of a political junkie and I am because my father is. I remember growing up, working on campaigns and going to political debates and political rallies and things when I was a kid. Over the years, you just kind of pick up these weird little nuggets of things, especially in the pre-internet days, these little sayings would kind of organically bubble up from these conventions and things. One thing I remember being a kid, this guy named Phil Graham, I believe, I think he was out of Texas if I am not wrong. I think he was running for President at the time but it was kind of early days when you have a dozen people running for President before it kind of gets whittled down to three or four and then eventually down to two and then one. He had this saying, he said there were wagon pullers and there were people in the wagon and basically the saying was implying that you didn't want to be sort of a deadbeat or something and be in the wagon; tax payers in a sense were wagon pullers, they were pulling the wagon.

I was thinking about this the other day because I was discussing with some expat friends of mine here in Thailand, “What is the Thai Immigration policy?” What are they looking for? And a friend of mine who has been here far longer than me kind of summed it up rather succinctly. He said, "Look, what they really want is the foreigner to come in; set up a business; provide a bunch of jobs and pay a bunch of taxes." And yeah, I am pretty sure if you talk to high level policy makers within the Immigration apparatus or within the political apparatus here in Thailand and you said "Hey, do you mind foreigners coming in, setting up a business, maintaining their visa status even possibly getting residency or citizenship? Do you have any problem with that, if they are coming in, setting up a business, creating a bunch of jobs, and paying a bunch of taxes?" I think the answer would be, "heck no. That is exactly who we are looking for." And I was just sort of thinking about it and I said it in conversation and in a way, Thai Immigration policy makers are looking for wagon pullers, they are not looking for people who just want to sit in the wagon.

Now I don't think there is anybody, well we did videos years back, on so-called "beg packers", foreigners who come to Thailand and were begging their way to travel through Southeast Asia, yeah, no I think that is really wrong and frankly quite unbecoming, I will put it that way. For the most part I don't think anybody is coming over here to do that and I do think in a very real sense for example retirees and I think that this paradigm is going to be further reinforced in the coming years especially post pandemic where we are seeing what the numbers are starting to shape up like, I think retirees, folks that are coming in and just want to spend their money here on a prolonged basis, I think those folks are definitely going to be considered wagon pullers moving forward as well. It is not just setting up a business but it is getting yourself into that same paradigm, that notion of a wagon puller versus somebody who is just trying to come over and sit in the wagon. I don't really see a lot of foreigners being in the latter category. That being said, that I think is a succinct way of looking at Thai Immigration's policy priorities.