Transcript of the above video:

Kind of a different video. We talk about Work Permits in Thailand a lot but I don't usually make videos about Philippines or Cambodia work authorization. I thought of making this video after reading a recent article in the Pattaya Mail, pattayamail.com, the article is titled: Thailand's 10-year Golden Visa outshone Thailand by Philippine alternative. I am going to quote an excerpt out of this. I urge those who are watching this video go check out that article, a lot of information in there; it is pretty deep insights and comparison to some other countries' Immigration System, so interesting stuff: Quoting directly: "Cambodia's CM2H (Cambodia My Second Home) attracted a lot of initial attention when first announced last July. It appeared to offer a possible path to citizenship within 5 years for investors bringing in over US$100,000. However, the deal requires a property investment in the Khmer Home Charity Association, a registered charity, with close Chinese connections.  Nonetheless, the detail includes an automatic Work Permit as does the Thai LTR. The Malaysian and Filipino variants do not, even for Digital Nomads." 

So some comparisons here. Malaysia and Philippines do not allow automatic sort of built-in work authorization. Meanwhile, the Thai LTR depending on which type of Long-term residents and again I don't mean to sound like a broken record, is not a Residence Visa, it is just like a long Non-Immigrant Visa, depending on which one you apply for, it may include built-in work organization. Again circumstances are going to vary little bit there. But again it looks like Cambodia does allow work authorization in this Cambodia my Second Home program. 

Something that I find really interesting about all of these, they're very vague. All of this Golden Visa stuff, is quite new. Honestly I am starting to wonder if it might just be a fad in Southeast Asia. I think they may I hesitate to say it's not really trying to be in the pejorative but I think these countries may have missed the boat on Golden Visas in the sense that yeah there was a time when there were digital nomads looking around for these programs, Southeast Asia wasn't really offering it and they would go other places. A lot of places in like Europe and South America offered these things. Post COVID, I just don't know if the environment is quite the same for these kind of Golden Visa programs.

Now again, Citizenship by Investment, that is kind of a different animal, I don't really want to get into all that but none of these seem to offer at least with the exception of the Cambodian one, may offer citizenship by investment. Again pretty murky. None of the other programs I have heard of offer that to the best of my knowledge; I doubt they will frankly. I definitely think Thailand won't. I don't think you will ever see a Thai Citizenship by Investment opportunity out there, I just don't think that is going to happen. So again, these Golden Visas, this work authorization stuff, is interesting but I am almost starting to wonder if even discussing is a bit academic, because I am just kind of wondering if there is going to be a lot of people that actually use this in practice.