Transcript of the above video: 

As the title of this video suggests, we are posing the question, is there an immigration slow down or a slowdown of tourism here in Thailand? I thought of making this video really after just seeing - frankly YouTube has really gotten inundated with just a lot of nonsense from a lot of people that really have no business talking about immigration stuff. They talk a lot now about AI slop; there's a lot of slop just generally out in the YouTube space where it comes to Immigration. I know why. I've been reading the demographics and reading analytics and everything for years. Folks that come out here and try to set up a YouTube channel or something, they don't have anything else to talk about, they know they can get a few clicks and views by talking about Immigration because Immigration is something that really matters to expats. But unfortunately, there was kind of a magic moment in there - and I was primarily at the forefront of it - probably it lasted about 6 years. The old Thai Visa Forum which I think is now called ASEAN NOW across the board, was once pretty useful for information, but I actually started this channel to try to combat what had become a lot of misinformation, disinformation, a lot of conflation of information or conflation of issues on that Forum, and it created a lot of really consternation in the expat public if you will, because nobody understood what was going on. It was like wading through the fog, and that was sort of why I started this channel. Obviously, there's a promotional element etc. associated with this channel, but I'm now starting to see the same phenomenon again with this proliferation of so-called YouTubers. And whatever, I mean do YouTube fine. I've never considered myself a YouTuber. I'm not denigrating them, it's just that wasn't my purpose here. I just was a guy with a law firm that had a channel that I use, again promotionally, but also to put out free information to clear up and dispel a lot of really just nonsense that was floating around out there. For a while it was really working and now it seems like the same phenomenon is occurring on YouTube that once occurred in the forums of Thai Visa where you have just got a lot of people talking about a lot of things they really don't have any idea what they are talking about. 

The biggest thing, not the biggest, but one of the things I have noticed here recently is this notion of "oh tourism is down, tourism is down". Again bad news also sells on YouTube so you are seeing a lot of people out there on YouTube saying, “oh is tourism in Thailand done for?" or something like this. The first thing to understand, and as I have discussed, Thailand's Immigration system in the last 18 months has been radically overhauled like three times now, okay? There are new visas: there are new long-term visas, things like the Destination Thailand Visa, things like the long-term Resident Visa, again "so-called" Resident Visa, it does not confer Lawful Permanent Residence in Thailand; it's just sort of a long Visa, but there are all alternatives. 

On top of this, they changed the Visa Exemption rules so it's no longer 30 days-on-arrival for most passport holders coming into Thailand, but 60 days-on-arrival. What this means is in the past with all those 30-day Visa Exemption holders and folks like that are folks that held Tourist Visas, they would do periodic Border Runs and they would leave and come right back in, and they would be using things like Exemption or Tourist Visa status. Those people were all getting counted over and over as tourists, even though they were effectively living in Thailand or staying in Thailand long-term. By consolidating these Visa categories, by allowing for longer term Visas like the Destination Thailand Visa and also by allowing longer terms on the Visa Exemption status like the 60 days as opposed to 30 days, it's led to less people coming and going just to go through the formality of maintaining their status in Thailand. And as a result of those people not coming and going, they're not being tabulated as tourists per se. So in many ways the books were "cooked" in the past and it made it look like there were more tourists here. If anything, if there's even a slight decline - I've read from some that have said January showed at 7% decline from January the prior year - yeah except there are more people using these long-term visas. It doesn't mean there are less people in Thailand, it just means people are being tabulated less as “tourists” per se, compared to the past. 

So I would say that these people that are out there saying, “tourism has fallen off a cliff or something", that's not what's going on here. Folks who used to effectively live in Thailand utilizing Visa status and Border Runs that were more temporary, are now finding longer-term solutions - that's one thing that has happened - and other true tourists who would have stayed in the past for 45 days, but would have had to either have done an extension in country or a Border Run are not doing either of those things, they are just staying within their 60 days and if they're not doing a Border Run they otherwise would have done, they are not being effectively counted twice as a tourist. So again, these numbers need to be viewed through that prism to understand that no, in fact tourism has not fallen off a cliff here in the Kingdom of Thailand.