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Comment by tachyonbeam | Hacker News Reader

On the flipside, if you can make Silicon Valley money and go live in Mexico or Thailand, chances are that you will cause real estate prices there to increase and become less accessible to the locals. You and your high salary, particularly in a low-income country, are an inflationary force. Does you bringing your high income there automatically translate in enriching the local community?

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It definitely does. You are not going to have enough people migrating to make a large enough difference. By all means, go to Thialand, they will welcome you with open arms. More money in the economy means more jobs for people.

More people with a higher level of technical skill will also enrich the community should you choose to participate.

Foreigners can not buy or own properties in Thailand. Often this scenario enriches some local after divorce.

If you live in Thailand and marry a Thai national, its pretty straight forwards to become a citizen.

There's no reason Joe Shmoe developer won't do this.

I wouldn't call living and working in Thailand for 10 years, speaking fluent Thai and passing an interview in Thai for your citizenship straightforward, but YMMV.

edit: typo

If you are married to a Thai national the only requirement is that you stay there for 3 years.

You can get a marriage visa. Actual citizenship is much more involved, and even for people meeting the difficult criteria I haven't heard of the process succeeding without help from people of influence. One of the criteria is working for a single Thai company continuously for several years, and won't be an option for remote workers. Remote workers can't even get a business visa, and end up in a legal gray area.

Only if you go there looking for luxury. The best at this gambit locate far away from where any other American or German or Canadian is likely to tread.

Perhaps it does, if Thai workers get their pay increased on a large enough scale. But these workers will also inject this increased money into the local economy, and pay more taxes towards the local government, so...

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