New dodgy visa introduced into Thailand for people wanting year-long visas

The struggle continues for people attempting to get to stay in the Kingdom of Thailand for much longer than the tourist visas allow. Things were pretty lenient when I first moved here and it was possible, although it was a pain in the ass, to get 3-month visas back to back to back to infinity. For whatever reason, probably because politicians feel as though they always have to be fiddling with something to justify their positions, these visas are not issued very many times in a row before the person is told they cannot have another one.

Thailand is a place that a lot of people want to live but unfortunately for them there just aren't that many options available for people who want to stay here long term and work online. Personally, I think it would benefit Thailand's economy greatly if they would open the doors to digital nomads because there was a time, like right when I first moved here that Thailand was seen as one of the best places in the world for people working remotely. Due to visa restrictions these days, it is no longer seen as such and the relatively wealthy digital nomads are relocating to places like Mexico and Central American countries.

I don't understand why Thailand doesn't seem to want this relatively affluent sector of the global society to stick around for a while, but that does seem to be the case.

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Not long ago, a bunch of people were deported for bogus volunteer visas and a few people who were legitimately volunteering got caught in the crossfire and had their visas rescinded as well. I feel sorry for the latter but not so much the former.

There are dodgy agents all over this country that promise they can get you all manner of visas in order to stay here long-term. Years ago it was education visas at schools that don't really even teach classes, then it was martial arts schools where very few of the students actually turned up for the classes outside of mandatory days where they would take photos to submit to immigration in order to make it appear as though all the students were always turning up. I knew quite a few people that were involved in this "hand to hand combat" school and almost none of them ever went to classes. It was very clearly a visa scam and one that has since been all but shut down.

When the volunteer visa scam got shut down and raided a few weeks ago I was thinking to myself about what is going to end up taking its place? Because there is always going to be something.

There are a new style of education visas and these are legitimate. These are administered by universities such as Chiang Mai University and you are expected to not only turn up for class 3 times a week, but there are also tests that you must pass in order to continue with your visa. These are not that expensive but it isn't what a lot of people are looking for because they don't actually want to go to school, they just want to have a long education visa.

Sorry folks, but those days are behind us

There is a new online only school that has just popped up out of Chiang Mai at Maejo university where you have to attend online courses just once a week for 2-3 hours. This doesn't seem like a big ask but I would imagine it is only a matter of time before we have people that are simply connecting to the online class, do none of the work, and the agent arranges a way to pay the professor a bit extra in order to give you a passing grade.

This is just kind of the way that things work in this country. Something will begin innocently enough as the volunteer visas did, but then greed quickly takes over and everyone who can get a piece of it wants a little bit more and a little bit more, then when the entire house of cards collapses, they blame the students rather than the agents and the people administering the classes who are pocketing a bunch of cash from gaming the system.

This new online only class out of Maejo University is already being circulated in certain groups online about people that are looking for long-term visas in Thailand. I guarantee that it will be just a bit over 1 year before the whole thing gets shut down and the people who are truly responsible for the scam like the agents, the immigration officials, and the actual professors who set up the course will not be the ones who take the fall. It will be the foreigners who get blamed for everything and while I am sure there will be plenty of foreigners who don't actually want to take the class and only want the visa, I think it is exceptionally unfair to punish everyone because of the bad apples.

Mark my words, this visa situation is going to fail as well. I give it 15 months... which is precisely how long the visa that they are promising lasts for.

If you want to stay here long term legally I'm afraid the only way you can really do it is by having a real business and therefore a business visa. Or you could teach part time like I do, get paid for it (not very much) and have your real income come from what you do online. When you go either of these routes it might not be as easy as a scammy education visa, but you aren't going to get deported for it once there is a changing of the guard at the local immigration office.