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As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing Thai O Marriage Visas. The question being posed is "have there been any changes to the Thai Marriage Visa lately or at all during sort of this COVID?" I have actually gotten a couple of emails just from people that have just said has anything changed on this? Not really. Overall the Thai O Marriage Visa the requirements largely remain the same. I can't think of any, well while we were dealing with COVID, there were certain insurance requirements and things associated with them. 

One thing to understand about the Thai O Marriage Visa is it is somewhat different from for example the O Retirement Visa insofar as the financial requirements may differ if one is just here in Thailand as someone married to a Thai spouse, does not look to work in Thailand and you are looking at 400,000 in a bank account or 40,000 Baht in income, proven income. I will say it has been our experience proving income in a non-Work Permit related context here in Thailand can prove a little bit tricky. This is especially the case for those who are under the retirement age of 50 here in Thailand because then people start saying "Well you haven't left Thailand. How are you making money? Are you working here?" So the income requirement can be a little tricky and by a little tricky, I mean difficult. Meanwhile, if you do maintain a Work Permit here in Thailand which oftentimes is the most optimal way of dealing with things especially for folks who are younger, if you do have a Work Permit here in Thailand, that may be kind of the optimal way to deal with it because then the issue of where the income is coming from is kind of solved. 

The other thing to think about with respect to Thai O Marriage Visas and Work Permits is it may put one on a path to Permanent Residence here in Thailand. So someone who is married to a Thai that is maintaining a Work Permit on a Thai O Marriage Visa, if they maintain it for long enough time period, if they sort of run out the clock, they may meet the requirements associated with being able to apply for Thai Permanent Residence. 

Something to think about as of the time of this video, we have not seen the Permanent Residence window open yet this year, the application window. It usually opens in the fourth quarter of the year. Hopefully we will see it opening sooner rather than later. That said, If you are looking at Thai Permanent Residence and if you are married to a Thai spouse and you have maintained a Work Permit for a fairly prolonged period of time, it may be worth looking into and you may want to do that sooner rather than later because you want to go ahead and get that petition prepared sooner rather than later because you are going to want to file it at the time they open the window. You don't want to wait for them to open the window. It takes a while to prepare a Permanent Residence petition. You don't want to wait to open the window, you want to go ahead and do that; you want to prepare that petition a few months out. So right now, July 2022, is a pretty good time if you are looking to get Permanent Residence; you are married to a Thai; you are maintaining a Work Permit, probably a pretty good time to be looking into filing or preparing the filing for PR here in the Kingdom of Thailand.