Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing and conversion into a Thai Retirement Visa. The thing to take away from this video is the question is: "Is it easy to convert from Business Visa to Retirement?"

Well "easy" is not always a great word to use when you are talking about Immigration matters in Thailand; straightforward may be a better terminology. Long story short, we have dealt with these in the past where you have got somebody who is in B Visa and Work Permit status; they have been working in Thailand and they are retiring. They just want to stay in Thailand. Even in sort of the pre-March 2020 era when we were dealing with sort of the "old" system if you want to call it that, a conversion like this, you usually didn't see conversions in Thailand because they kind of don't like to do conversions and we have discussed that in other videos where we talk about the nature of non-immigrant status. 

The reason for this video is in our experience even before March of 2020 in the discretionary authority granted to Immigration, I always thought that there was a little bit more understanding on the part of a conversion from a B Visa into a Retirement Visa compared to like other types of visas, tourist for example or even Ed visas and these kinds of things. The feeling was well I think Immigration officers had a better handle on the narrative associated with switching from a B Visa to Retirement Visa. "I was working in Thailand; I am not going to work anymore; I am going to convert." That doesn't mean it is necessarily easy to do. It doesn't mean it is necessarily possible to do. Again everything is fact dependent and it is also going to be dependent on the Officer one is dealing with when they are adjudicating the overall matter but it has been my experience that when it comes to conversions, a B Visa into a Retirement Visa is often times a little bit more straightforward than trying to go from another Non-Immigrant category into that category.