Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing Expat business here in Thailand. Specifically we are also discussing B Visas, that is Business Visas for Thailand and Work Permits. It has been rather interesting, roughly the last month noticing that the dynamic, the demographic if you will, of folks that are contacting us is really shifting. Back during COVID everybody that was contacting us was basically people that already lived here and they got stuck outside of Thailand as a result of all the lockdowns. We helped a lot of those folks, we got a lot of people into Thailand, we are very proud of that. We got a lot of people into Thailand when nobody was getting people into Thailand by the way too, so very, very proud of those accomplishments, those achievements during that. But the dynamic has shifted again and it has been kind of interesting to watch. It has been maybe even a little difficult for me to sort of readjust as we were sort of dealing with things one way and now we are kind of reverting to dealing with things another way. All things being equal I kind of prefer it moves in this direction but it's been kind of weird or surreal kind of going through it. 

The thing to take away from this video, yeah we have seen a lot more folks coming in wanting to be prospective expats again and do business here in Thailand and again I get the usual questions I always get. This is also kind of, the waters are a little bit murky on this issue because there is the so-called LTR Visa out there that everybody is kind of talking about. Again, it's referred to as Long-Term Residency, it's not a Residence Visa. It's supposedly a 10-year visa, it's really not. It is sort of a 5-year visa with this constant review associated with it. So again the LTR is still kind of in its nebulous form, we'll see how it turns out. My personal opinion, it is going to wind up like the Smart Visa where for a very small subset of people it is very useful but for the broad masses of folks that are looking at, not masses but numbers of folks looking to come to Thailand to do business, standard Thai Business Visas and Work Permits are probably going to be what they end up going to get and it is probably better frankly.

As I have discussed multiple times in multiple videos on this channel standard Thai Business Visa and Work Permit puts one on the path to actual Permanent Residence here in Thailand. That is true PR where as soon as it is adjudicated and it is approved you are resident, you are done. I mean unless you commit a major crime you are not leaving Thailand, you are just here so that is just how to think of that. So again, the thing to take away from this video is to understand in an expat context for the vast majority of expats, probably the best bet with regard to visa and work authorization status is just going to be a standard Thai Business Visa along with a standard Thai Work Permit.