When I first decided to give up on my life in USA and move to South East Asia I hadn't originally planned to spend the rest of my life here, it just kind of happened. I think a big part of the reason why I stuck around is because back when I moved to Asia, visas were extremely simple and rather unlimited. Wow, how things have changed since then.
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I no longer live in Thailand but it was my first port of call, so to speak, and things were much easier for people trying to stay long-term there compared to how it is now. I actually left the country specifically because visas became too difficult or even impossible to get.
You see, Thailand has this very strange love / hate relationship with foreigners in their country that developed while I was living there - which was for a very long time. I first moved there in 2004 with no visa at all. I just arrived with what is called the "visa on arrival" that lasts for a mere 30 days. Then for probably around a year I just did a visa run with friends to the Malaysian border and jumped across to the Immigration stations only to go to 4 booths on foot and then come straight back to the car that the 4 of us had rented and drive straight back to Krabi, which is where I lived at the time.
Myself and basically everyone else I knew at the time was working in diving, and most of us were doing so illegally. It's not that we had disdain for the law, it was just that at that point in time the Thai government was extremely aware that 90% of the dive industry contained foreign workers but they just turned a blind eye because of the fact that this was a rather vital part of the tourism industry and there simply aren't enough Thai people that are qualified to teach or guide dive trips because in order to do this job you need to be an extremely good swimmer (something that very few Thais can claim), you had to be completely fluent in English and preferably at least proficient in one or more other languages, and you needed to be a pretty highly certified diver. To guide divers by PADI standards you need to have achieved the certification level of at least Divemaster and this involves spending at least several months training and acquiring a minimum of 60 logged dives. In order to be an instructor, you have to have significantly more training to do the job.
I can't say for certain but I think that someone, somewhere, plead the case to local authorities in the tourist sectors of certain popular diving areas of Thailand such as Koh Tao, Koh Samui, Koh Phangngan, Phuket, Lanta, and Krabi to make the people that would bust you turn away because there simply weren't any Thai people that could do this job and the industry generated a lot of revenue for taxation. The fact that the diving existed as a service was a big part of the reason why the tourists were coming there in the first place as well.
I'm quite certain that there was some "hush money" going on as well because that is a favorite pastime of Thai government officials and is a guaranteed payday for doing nothing.
In the 18 months or so that I spent working in the dive industry, we would very rarely have a Thai national working on the boats that was actually working in diving. A great deal of the staff and of course the boat captains were all Thai nationals, but I only ever encountered 2 Thai people during my time working in the industry that were actually working as guides or instructors.
One would think that the Thai instructors would be in a wonderful and unique position to make more money because they would have been the only people at the various dive shops that would be capable of teaching or guiding any Thai customers but here is another part of the issue as far as that is concerned: Thai people don't dive.
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Teaching diving can be fairly lucrative and at least compared to the average Thai wage it could be considered a very good career for a Thai person. I don't understand why more Thai people dont pursue this as a career because while I was living there the Thai government actually offered to 100% pay for Thais to train and get certified in diving, which is actually quite an expensive process especially if you are going from "zero to hero" which is a term reserved for people that go straight from no diving experience all the way up to certified dive guide.
As a working Divemaster you can expect to make around 40,000 Baht a month (about $1300) and as an instructor you can pull down double that amount or even more. While that likely doesn't impress a westerner and would never suffice as a salary in places like USA you need to keep in mind that the average Thai monthly wage is below $500 a month.
I've gone off on a tangent here but the point is that nearly all of us working in diving didn't have a work permit but we were assured we would never be busted for this because the Thai officials understood that the industry wouldn't function without the foreign workers in the industry and they also knew that the rules that existed within the labor department made it nigh on impossible for for all of the dive workers to get legally employed. This, combined with the under-the-table payoff meant that all of us just went to work in the morning and got paid cash.
Before anyone thinks we were abusing the system please note that just in Krabi, hundreds of Thai people were also employed at better-than-average wages directly because of the "illegal" dive industry workers. Every single member of every dive school's shop who wasn't directly involved in the actual diving aspect of it, was Thai. Drivers, cooks, shop staff, boat staff, and anything else you can imagine, they were all Thai people. The only non-Thais were the dive instructors and guides.
Going on a visa run every month was a pain in the butt and something we would have rather not done for sure. However, it was only once a month and while it did take 6 hours and involved renting a car, between 4-6 passengers taking turns at the wheel, it wasn't that big of a deal especially since that because we work in the dive industry, waking up super early in the morning to get a jump start on the day is something that we were very accustomed to.
When we would arrive at the immigration checkpoints at the border every 30 days, we were never asked any questions about why we have so many stamps nor were any of us ever denied entry or even warned that we had "too many tourist stamps." This has changed a great deal since those easygoing days. Now, there are a lot of people that are being harassed at border crossings and while very few people are flat-out denied entry, they are given a "final visa" that is marked in such a way to let the person know that they will not be issued any more tourist visas for a certain amount of time.
I guess you could say that I admire the Thai government a little bit for finally going legit, but at the same time these rules seem to be rather arbitrarily enforced. The few people I still know that attempt to live this way approach border crossings with some level of fear that they are going to be reprimanded and told that they have 30 days to get out of the country.
I have not live in Thailand for coming up on 4 years now and the reason why I left the country in the first place was because getting "easy visas" in the long term is something that doesn't really exist anymore. You'll hear a story here and there about someone that has learned how to game the system and that is great if they can pull that off. The point I am trying to make is that for many years long ago the government seemed to be happy to allow people to stay in the country as long as they wanted provided they didn't break any laws while they were in it.
Thailand seemed to be a bit more sensible regarding immigration back in the early 2000's than they are now. They realized that while the people in the dive industry were technically working illegally, it simply wasn't feasible for that industry to operate without allowing the exception. I don't have any idea how the dive industry manages to function right now and I would imagine that this, as well as Covid, probably has eliminated a great deal of the shops that were involved in that industry.
In 2004 when I was literally fresh off the boat, life was easy. It was care-free for the most part and I think that it would benefit the Thai government and their economy if they would return to just allowing people to have as many visas as they want. If the workers were taking jobs away from Thai nationals I would understand the standpoint, but in the particular case that I am referring to it has been proven that dive workers are not taking jobs away from Thai people.
I mull over moving back to Thailand every now and then because honestly, aside from the financial side of things and how Vietnam is around 40% cheaper to live in than Thailand, I prefer living in Thailand. The fact of the matter is that I cannot possibly obtain long-term visas in Thailand and therefore will not attempt to move back there until this changes.
There is always the retirement visa that I will qualify for once I am 50, but that is a story for another day.