Can expats truly consider Thailand their home while on long-term visas?

Tulip Fields and Rae Wangmorons,

You can reply if you wish, but both accounts are now blocked. Tulip (or Rae, or whatever sock-puppet handle you’re cycling through today):

“It’s all true you idiot.”

Charming opening. Nothing says “reasoned argument from a former university lecturer in politics” quite like leading with name-calling and the classic troll assertion that whatever toxic slurry you just dumped is simply “all true.”

You’re not debating; you’re stomping your foot and demanding the room treat your xenophobic grievance dump as scripture. Noted.

You object to “chauvinistic” because I don’t know your race, gender, or nationality. Adorable. Evidently you don’t fully know the meaning of the word. Chauvinism is not a gender studies seminar term reserved exclusively for men in MAGA hats. (You?)

It also means aggressive, uncritical hypernationalism and the belief that one’s own group is superior while everyone else is the problem. (U choosen people?)Your original rant (the one that treated Indians as low-value head-count tourists, painted long-stay foreigners as economically invisible victims, and casually assumed retirees are better drivers than “the average Thai”) was dripping with exactly that.

Pretending the word only applies if I can produce your passport and pronouns is either deliberate obtuseness or the sort of pedantry that makes actual political scientists quietly leave the room.

“Splenetic”? Yes. Ill-tempered, bilious, full of spleen. That long, run-on screed about how Thailand is turning into “the Asian equivalent of Benidorm,” how ordinary Thais are too stupid to understand the economic value of people like you, how the government should suffer a tourism collapse so your preferred cohort can be properly appreciated, and how banks and immigration are persecuting the virtuous long-stayer… that was not a calm policy paper. It was a bitter, self-pitying rant.

Calling it splenetic is almost polite.

You frame criticism of a “nationalistic government” as if nationalism were some exotic Thai pathology. Nearly every elected government on earth prioritizes its own citizens. Duh!

Thai voters elect Thai politicians who, shockingly, respond to Thai voters. You and I are guests. We do not get a veto. The idea that Thailand’s policy should revolve around making long-stay foreigners feel maximally valued while ordinary Thais remain unenlightened about “our economic impact” is not analysis; it is entitlement wearing a thin academic costume.

The “former university lecturer in politics” flourish is doing a lot of heavy lifting. Even if true, it does not immunize you from writing like a bar-stool conspiracy theorist who has discovered that other countries also have rules. Invoking the title while simultaneously claiming the MAGA comparison is “hilariously funny” because MAGA is “America first” is pure projection.

Your entire original post as Rae Wang was “Long-stay foreigner first, and if Thailand doesn’t deliver, Vietnam will steal our retirement paradise.” That is the same emotional logic with different flags. SS?

Living in five countries and “respecting everyone” is lovely résumé padding until the moment you start ranking tourist nationalities by spending power and sneering at the host population’s political priorities.

You “don’t leave [your] intellect at the door.” Excellent. Then use it. An intellect that produces false claims such as monthly unannounced police visits “forever” as the new normal, or that the average long-stay retiree is a demonstrably better driver than the average Thai, is not operating at full power.

An intellect that treats the host country’s democratic choices as personal insults is not sophisticated; it is just shriller

The sneer at the “Everything here is great” mentality and the observation that “a whole generation of Thais don’t believe everything is wonderful” is a red herring. No one demanded you chant that Thailand is paradise.

Rather, the issue is the steady stream of your contempt directed at Thai people, Thai driving, Thai culture, Thai educational levels, and Thai politics by people who chose to live here.

Ordinary Thais are perfectly capable of criticizing their own country. Guests who do it in the form of multi-paragraph ethnic and economic ranking exercises while simultaneously demanding more favorable treatment look exactly like the ungrateful arrivals the rest of the group is tired of defending.

Bottom line remains simple. You do not vote here. You do not set immigration, banking, or licensing policy. If the cumulative weight of Thai democracy, Thai bureaucracy, and Thai priorities is intolerable, the exit is clearly marked. Au revoir

Many people manage to live here for decades without turning every inconvenience into a racialized or nationalist conspiracy and without needing an imaginary national pressure group of wealthy retirees to lobby Thai politicians on their behalf.

The rest of us are not required to treat your grievances as gospel, nor to pretend that calling the host population economically illiterate and politically shortsighted is high-minded analysis. It smacks of the belief that you are the chosen people and the Thais are lucky to have you. You have it 180° wrong.

Sabai sabai was an invitation to lower the temperature. You answered by doubling down and calling people idiots. That tells the rest of us everything we need to know about the quality of the “reasoned argument.”

Tulip Fieldsbefore the internet Jim never existed ... Blissful times

Charles Hallam Then you are not paying attention. One reason the Thai healthcare system is having issues is due to the free care they give out the Burmese. Half of my wife's class was from Burma, and not one of them had papers.

Steve Carter These numbers they put out are not realistic. The US has at most 350m people, and the current admin is trying to say the dems let in 20m in four years along with all the previous immigrants. At least make the numbers believable. I have lived in farming communities and near boarder areas. There is crime, but it isn't by the people who came over. Some of their kids gets into trouble since most end up being latch key, are living in the worst areas, going to crap schools, and living on top of each other. The jobs they do are not jobs Americans want, heck Thais don't want the jobs Burmese do either. The work is rough and the pay is shit. You can say go back to so and so country; great. But do you realize, especially when it comes to the US, they created most of pain these people run from due to their BS tampering with governments.

Thai Jag the temple guy was publicised, the immigration jail literally holds hundreds awaiting deportation. Agree the task for immigration is huge, and corruption ongoing, one loophole closes another opens.

I seem to have pushed the post off topic a little by saying Thailand likes to control who is here, maybe this is poorly policed but I think there is a desire for control.

Living here, we take the good with the bad, for me there has been much more positive than negative, I know it's a developing nation with all the negatives you expressed but I don't lose sleep over any of it.

Thai Jag guess we're just going to ignore the copious amount of Burmese here since it doesn't fit your narrative.

Warwick Cook i can't speak to European immigration since I've never lived there. But in the US the amount of crime from illegal immigration is miniscule compared to US citizens.

Warwick Cook Rubbish. The very fact so many foreigners do visa runs shows corrupt exploitation of an immigration system, looking to exploit loopholes that don't exist in other countries. For instance, it is literally impossible to legally live in the UK continuously on a tourist visa. As for Thailand keeping better tabs on illegal immigrants, not a week goes by without the reported deportation of a foreigner found to have been living under the radar, in plain sight, without any kind of visa. Just this week, a Norwegian national was departed after he had been living like a tramp in the grounds of a temple for almost 3 years. The Thailand authorities literally had no idea that he never left after entering into s 30 day waiver. Immigration authorities patently have a bigger challenge than Thailand, because friendly, Thailand is a poor country, and less of a draw for mass migration. The closest Thailand gets to mass migration are the descendants of Nationalist Chinese and Burmese refugees. Thailand doesn't recognise the concept of refugees, but nevertheless, there are refugees, just not regulated. The This can pretend they just don't exist. They have no idea how many Karen refugees there are. The border authorities are incredibly corrupt on a scale not seen in Europe or the US. This is evidenced by the open existence of agents able to "fix" Income status among retirees who lack the necessary funds, the draconian efforts they've had to do to crack down on smuggling of cars and other things. Even for the majority of Thai-Foreigner marriages have had to be accomplished through corruption (paying off witnesses, paying off Amphur officials to skip the line). Those foreigners living in Thailand while attacking the immigration policies of their own countries likely possess unhealthy views on race that would shock their Thais partners/wives.

David Watson and how many of them want to retire in those countries? The majority that I know (and after over 30 years married to a Thai there are many), plan to come back “home”. The grass is always greener in the other side. If the negatives out way the positives, no matter where you live, move away if you have the resources.

David Watson ... which is part of the reason that much of Central London is owned by foreigners. I guess you'll be moving elsewhere then 😉

@Rob ******

absolute bollocks. I know Thais who live in France, Germany, USA, UK, Switzerland, Australia and New Zealand who have full citizenship, have the right to buy and sell property, open as many bank accounts as they want without the fear of them being randomly frozen, work, start their own business, pay taxes. All because they have a clean record and have gone through the process legally. Thais get treated a lot better in foreign countries than foreigners get treated in Thailand

@Rob ******

Yes, Thais are ruthlessly exploited my bureaucrats and businesses.