Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing so-called Thai Long-Term Residence Visas. As we have discussed in a number of videos, the term Residence Visa is something of a misnomer. These are just kind of Long-Term Non-Immigrant visas; they do not, I repeat do not confer the right to reside permanently in Thailand, it is not a Permanent Residence Visa.

But yeah this has been the topic on a lot of people's lips here recently because we are getting close to the point of this being rolled out as a practical matter and people are kind of speculating as to what this is going to look like. Brings me to the article that got me to thinking of making this video, the article is titled: The Thai and Cambodian golden expat Visas now look to be very different. That's the Pattaya Mail, pattayamail.com, yeah. I urge those that are watching this video to go check out that article for themselves, a lot of information on there. I am going to just quote a small excerpt out of there. Quoting directly: "The Thai rules for Long-Term Visa, LTR, vary somewhat according to category but anyone with less than one million US Dollars, or equivalent, to spare is unlikely to survive the qualifying rules." Yeah, it's interesting. I have had a lot of people ask me the financial requirements with respect to these proposed LTR visas. They are quite a bit higher than the Visas we have dealt with primarily in the past. You can make some arguments that they are very comparable to the Smart Visa in certain ways, in certain ways they are not. They have many differences most notably they are issued for a longer period of time. There are multiple categories, the Smart Visa never had anything specifically for retirees whereas the LTR has this sort of "wealthy pensioner" Visa; there are various categories.

Long story short, does it take a million dollars? I mean not necessarily. There are different categorizations with different requirements but honestly with respect to varying the requirements, it looks to me like in terms of lump sum, a quarter million US Dollars seems to kind of be the absolute floor whereas the ceiling with respect to benefits seems to be up around a million dollars depending on the investment. Again this is all still relatively nebulous. We haven't seen this absolutely rolled out yet and for that reason there is an element of speculation to all of this. I think we are going to be able to provide a lot more clarity in the upcoming weeks as the situation evolves.