No Money, No Honey No Nothing

[Guest]

I'm shocked to see an increase of western men as vagriants within Thailand, in some cases I might agree that through circumstances beyond their control they might well find themselves living on the street. But is it not the case, if you cannot afford the life style to live in Thailand you simply can't have it. So why choose to beg or live off other people to stay, should these vagriants be rounded up and returned to their own countries ...

 

Westerners think our immigration laws are over complicated and unjust, but that is Thailand. Most westerners comply with visa requirements, work or have other means to support themselves, which seems unfair if their counterparts do not.

 

This begs the question who should be paying to return these vagriants to their home countries if they have no money, should it be their goverments or an increase in visa charges for all westerners that would build up a fund that could be used for repatriation.

[bust]

The way Thailand is going at the moment I don't think it will be an issue for much longer.

[radioman]

I wouldn't be averse to paying a fee for visa free entry as is done in some countries say 20-30 Euros per 30 day entry and no BS when renewing or multiple in/out. Don't know how many visa free entries a year but that should nicely recover some costs.

[cavanami]

Some years ago, someone posted a story of Stick's stick, putting forth the idea of making Pattaya an adult Disneyland.

 

Maybe its time has come

[Dexi]

re. vagrants - let the Thai authorities notify the relevant embassy,then the ball is in their court,if they choose to do nothing,well " Up to them "

[YimSiam]

Thailand is only a banana republic administratively, not financially - plenty of money on hand to deport the small numbers of vagrants and criminals when they're done with their sentences for immigration violations, I would think. Good for Thai Airways, too - a little cash infusion for a good cause, at least. I remember back when Immigration detention was on Suan Phlu (is it still?) a few years ago, there were some foreigners in there for four, five, even eight years - just biding time due to lack of documents and unwillingness to return. Put in a year or two post-sentence, there were charities who could buy a ticket for you, but some refused or couldn't establish a basis to get sent anywhere. And so they just stayed in Suan Phlu...

[Mekong]

Immigration Detention Centre is still on Suan Phlu, well it still was last time I was home.

[dean]

Most westerners that come to Thailand to work have marketable skills that Thailand needs. My wife and 24 year old daughter and 20 year old son have no marketable skills but, because they have a Green Card, are allowed to get work from any employer that will hire them. Getting into the U.S. legally can be time consuming (and impossible for those without the skills or money to support themselves), but once in possession of a Green Card, there is little that they can't do that a citizen can do, except vote. My 24 year old thai step daughter had no health Insurane, had kidney stones, and ran up a $10,000 hospital bill. She didn't have to give the hospital her passport/Green CRd and wasn't assigned a hospital employee, whose function was to get the money to pay the bill from my daughter's ATM or from me. Green Cards are valid for 10 years, so no 90 day check ins. With a Green Card, the path to citizenship is straight forward. If someone can speak decent English and learn the answers to 100 civic questions (and get at least a 6 out of the 10 questions asked). They are U.S. Citizens. The U.S. Is still a welcoming nation towards legal immigrants. I get the feeling that, if Thailand didn't need the skilled labor and the money that tourists spend, they would close their borders. If you want to be part of the 21st Century industrial world economy, that isn't an option. As someone that supports a thai wife and 3 step children in the U.S., I don't have much sympathy for your position.

[YimSiam]

Dean, I think that US attitude towards others stems from a fundamentally different conception of the state and nation - US is a political entity (by necessity, one could say, since there is not really another unifying factor that can be called up to define the nation), the state a legal creation, so others can come even in substantial numbers and be fully accepted as 'one of us' and we don't feel like it violates our sense of who or what we are. Whereas many nation states are expressions of a racial concept, of a 'homeland' and some notion of purity of blood and culture, and that doesn't allow a lot of room for newcomers to be absorbed, since they patently don't fit the vision of what "the nation" is (no matter that the notions of race/ethnicity/culture/however you want to call it are basically fabrications to fit someone's need for power and control (sure, blame it on the colonials, but their replacements are guilty too)). Where the state is not a political agreement between diverse citizens, the inclusion of anyone else can only be on an exceptional and begrudging basis, which will never be on equal conditions. Yes, it's delusional (where would Thailand be if it had not absorbed Indian influences and people, Arabs and Chinese over the centuries?!), but that's how it goes. Imagined communities, where a failure of imagination ensures that 'others' remain others - to be exploited, perhaps occasionally rewarded or finally acknowledged as never going away, but not really accepted as equals. Look at the 'colored ID card' approach Thailand has to its minority 'hilltribes', or Burma's multi-tiered levels of 'citizenship' - administrative contortions that seek to defuse but not resolve issues of 'the others among us'...

 

But - I still say, you come as a tourist or businessman, or illegally, and you violate the terms of your agreed stay, you should pay the price, and then the nation should kick you out and never let you back - and where it has the means, like Thailand, should put you on a bus or plane and send you back where you belong.

[Flashermac]

"Yes, it's delusional (where would Thailand be if it had not absorbed Indian influences and people, Arabs and Chinese over the centuries?!)"

 

I'd say Thailand has been absorbed and taken over by the Chinese, not the other way around.