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Thailand Permanent Residence: Nationality Quotas

Transcript of the above video:

As the title to this video suggests, we are going to be discussing Thai permanent residence. For specifics or I shouldn't say specifics, for sort of  the broad overview on Thai PR generally, I recommend checking out another video on this channel discussing Thailand Permanent Residence but, but for this video specifically we are specifically talking about so called nationality quotas. 

What do we mean by this? Well under the current regime by which permanent residence is adjudicated in the Kingdom of Thailand, there is a quota system that basically has been put in place which places basically a cap on the number of individuals within a given nationality who may apply for PR under the quota, in this system. So there are non-quota immigrants and I'm not going to get into that specifically within this video but essentially the thing to take away from this, for a first-time applicant for permanent residence, the quota system is probably going to apply to that individual; there are exceptions to the rule, but for the most part, most people the quota is going to apply when they are first applying for Thai PR. The first thing to remember is that Thai PR, it's an extension in a sense but it's also confers a certain visa status and specifically that visa status is immigrant visa status; so that's something to keep in mind. With respect to quotas generally” yes there is a quota system”, it tends to be capped at a hundred for most of the foreign countries that speaks say English or the European Union countries. Quotas may vary with respect to other nationalities that are perhaps near to the Kingdom although it's my experience that by and large the quota system seems to apply rather evenly across all nationality spectrum. But that being said it does seem a little bit strange that the same quote that applies to say Mauritius or the Maldives , very small countries, population wise, compared to say India or China would apply but that being said oftentimes,  that turns out to be the case. Most of the nationalities that really need to worry about the PR quota are as I mentioned countries that have high population density and that are very well represented in terms of expats here in the Kingdom. So in my experience I've noticed that Indians and Chinese, Indian nationality, folks with Indian nationality, and people with Chinese nationality, specifically the people from the Republic of China oftentimes come up against quota issues with respect to processing their Permanent Resident applications. Meanwhile the so-called Anglo sphere, the countries that speak English, it's been my experience that most years go by without there being a quote issue or somebody coming up against the quota.  Europe seems to be sort of the same way where the quota system is not something that really needs to be particularly worried about but it is something to keep an eye on and especially here recently where I've seen that the, that the policies toward immigration are more favorable somewhat and efficient with respect to those who are wanting to stay longer-term and have the  credentials to do it, so have all the say necessary documentation to go ahead and prove up, go ahead and prove up a reason for extending something like permanent residence. There's going to be more applicants and they're processing a bit more efficiently now so there's more and more people that are going through the lines. As a result, it's possible that we could see more and more nationalities bumping up against these quotas.  Finally another thing to take away from this video is there is a certain period of time, the so called “window” opens, usually for 30 days, where they accept permanent residence applications and then it closes again and you have to wait around till the next year. So again the quota can be something that can create some difficulty with respect to the overall process because one that bumps up against the quota might find the window close on them and then they have to wait around until the next year. So depending on circumstances, the quota system may or may not be of very particular import with respect to a given case.