Chinese and Russian criminals have been repeatedly caught making arms and drug deals within Thailand recently, using Thai proxies as fronts for their illegal businesses.
Stricter business regulations would likely be more effective as a primary legislative change rather than a blanket reduction in visa-free travel, but I hope whatever they decide works.
which is bizzare as Malaysia has 90 day tourist visas and is literally next door.
so calling bullshit on this, if they’re already criminals how is making them more criminal going to help ?
If they are having problems with Chinese and Russian nationals, then restrict them ffs and insist they get an actual visa.
Or make mandatory business review a part of the law, put a few thousand more people in their federal taxation review department using 0.1% of the annual tourist budget to make sure thai businesses are legitimate; there are a few avenues other than restricting visa-free duration that seem more effective off the top of the dome.
Important that it’s not even an actual proposal yet, the minister who has talked about it is planning now to inteoduce the proposal, but it hasn’t been written, and even at this stage the same minister is already bringing up Malaysia and Vietnam for the exact reason you are, but Thailand was 90 days for a very long time until it recently switched to 60 days. I don’t know what will happen, but any changes will affect 30 to 40 million people a year and is a unique and significant enough story to share and discuss.
