<p>Hey everyone. I’m going to graduate from college in the near future in govt./internation realtions, and was wondering how far knowing Thai can get me. I’ve done some brief research and it seems that there are only 150k thai residents in the US and because of that fact, wouldn’t that make the language critcally needed like Arabic/Chinese/Urdu,etc. Just wondering what the older members with firsthand experience in the fields of int. relations and the gov. jobs can tell me about job potential. Thanks.</p>
<p>One of my friends lived 10 years in Thailand, working as an architect, and never had to learn the Thai language.</p>
<p>The languages on the government’s critically-needed list (Arabic, Indic, Turkic, Korean, Russian, Chinese, and Persian) are languages spoken in areas considered to be of critical importance to American foreign policy (China, Korea, India, Iran, Russia, and the Middle East). Frankly… Thailand really isn’t that important in the grand scheme of things; that’s why it’s not on the list.</p>
<p>^ It’s on the FBI’s list.</p>