@Todd ********
. Ha! Makes perfect sense to me and I'm sure many others. They're being if not obstructive but certainly unsupportive of letting any expats back in, so you would think having a large number of tourists who are happy to stay and spend money at the lower end of the community (street food, bars etc, where it's actually needed) would make brilliant sense, but when you read the statement
“There most likely will not be an extension. It’s all quiet on that front. It’s been a long time and we need to clear out people,” Phakkaphong said. “Thailand and the Thai government are already generous. No other country has this long of a visa amnesty.”
you do have a rethink on commonsense values. AND if they started charging the tourists the standard 1900 baht for each additional month, this would bring much-needed foreign money into the coffers. This may still happen, and I think is why the overflow immigration office is re-opening on Monday. I expect an official announcement on Monday.
Personally I'd like to see more effort put into getting longstay visa holders back into Thailand. I know they have to cater for their own citizens, but again, each longstay expat will be pumping a minimum 35,000 baht into the economy just for the cost of the quarantine.
But perhaps I'm looking at things from the wrong perspective