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As the title of this video suggests or questions or asks, was foreign land ownership rescinded, was the promise of foreign land ownership rescinded? I thought of making this video after reading a recent article from the Pattaya Mail, that is pattayamail.com, the article is titled: Thai Immigration updates: November 2022 under the subheading: Why has the promise to allow 10-year Visa holders to purchase a small plot of land been rescinded? Quoting directly: "It was never an absolute promise to allow foreigners with an LTR (long-term residence) Visa and an investment of at least 40 million baht to purchase one rai for residential purposes. A final decision on the matter was removed from cabinet agenda this month and is unlikely to return. The proposal was unpopular with many politicians (especially with an election looming) least it pushes up the cost of land when many Thais are too poor to buy their own homes. The purchase was also ambiguous on detail for example, how, when and to whom a foreign purchaser could resell his or her holding. The fear that Chinese conglomerates might buy up parts of urban areas also seems to have been an issue."

So a lot going on there but long story short, this was never a promise. Quite honestly, the media was out there talking about this like it was a foregone conclusion and it never was, it was going through legislative process. It's like saying a Bill in America is already a Law. No if it hasn't gone through the due process of going through the House of Representatives and the Senate and the President, all of that, then it's not a law yet. It's similar here although not exactly the same obviously than the United States. But yeah they were only talking about doing this. They never said they were going to do it; they never approved it. That's why you go through this process so people can kind of review it and debate it and decide if they really want to do it and ultimately it was decided they were going to drop it.

My personal opinion on this, it really doesn't bother me. I was ambivalent at best to the notion of foreign land holding. Yeah I do understand I'm not a born Thai, I'm a naturalized Thai, but I get it. I do understand why foreigners want to own land here in Thailand and I think there is something to be said for the notion of possible residential ownership but long story short, there are also National Security matters that have to be thought of with respect to Thailand and there is also the issue that look there are major capitalization disparities between certain foreign nationals and the Thai economy and those disparities are such that they could cause an extreme warping of the property market here in Thailand if a bunch of foreign investment starts pouring into it. 

So my opinion on this was, well I understand the spirit behind it was probably a pretty darn good idea. It was something people were acting in good faith on but there are significant concerns among the Thais and I think those concerns are warranted and for that reason they decided to drop this thing.