When peo­ple in T&T think about mi­gra­tion, the same des­ti­na­tions usu­al­ly dom­i­nate the con­ver­sa­tion: the Unit­ed States, Cana­da, and the Unit­ed King­dom. These routes feel fa­mil­iar, but they have be­come in­creas­ing­ly dif­fi­cult to ac­cess. Visa back­logs, tighter im­mi­gra­tion rules, ris­ing liv­ing costs, and long pe­ri­ods of un­cer­tain­ty have made mi­gra­tion feel out of reach for many.

What is of­ten over­looked is that this dif­fi­cul­ty is not uni­ver­sal.

Over the past two years, Thai­land has mod­ernised its im­mi­gra­tion frame­work, in­tro­duc­ing visa op­tions that make it eas­i­er for peo­ple from the Caribbean—in­clud­ing T&T—to live in the coun­try legal­ly for short, medi­um, or long pe­ri­ods. With cost-of-liv­ing pres­sures re­shap­ing per­son­al and pro­fes­sion­al de­ci­sions, Thai­land has emerged as a prac­ti­cal al­ter­na­tive worth con­sid­er­ing.