Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing Thai Permanent Residence and whether it's time to start preparing an application. Now for those who are sort of aware of how Thai PR works, Permanent Residence applications generally speaking are filed at the end of a given calendar year. The reason for this is there is a Permanent Residence window at Thai Immigration and it only opens periodically, usually opening in the latter half of the fourth quarter of the calendar year.

So the thing to take away from this video and to understand is okay that's when you file but why would I be talking about this in January, February in the first part of the first quarter of that same year? Because Permanent Residence applications take a great deal of time to compile. The other thing you have to ascertain is if you are even eligible and the eligibility criteria I know a lot of people think that it's pretty straightforward, it's kind of not. There is a whole sort of totality of the circumstances analysis that needs to be undertaken to ascertain whether or not a person is actually eligible for Permanent Residence which we advise a number of clients in a given year on matters pertaining to eligibility. People contact us and say “look I've been in Thailand X number years; I've been doing XYZ; I want to know if I'm eligible for PR.” And we oftentimes advise and assist folks with those types of questions.

After that question is answered though, if you are in fact eligible these petition packages, I mean some of them look like the phone book. I mean they are thick; they require a great deal of information and documentation and it takes a great deal of time to gather that stuff up. So the thing to take away from this video and understand is okay maybe February is not, you don't need to be really jumping the gun or sort of chomping at the bit to be doing your Permanent Residence application at this moment, but if you are serious about it and you think you are eligible or you are eligible, you have ascertained that you are eligible, yeah you probably want to get started on it in the first half of the year. I would even make an argument that really sometime in the second quarter is probably going to be a good idea because you just never know in terms of some of this documentation whether or not it is going to be possible to easily obtain it and then file it in a timely manner in order to have the matter adjudicated and then ultimately, again get the case on file and then walk it through.

So the thing to take away from this video is you need to ascertain eligibility early in a given year if you are looking to file in that same year and then you need to make the determination pretty quickly thereafter if you are eligible, do I want to go ahead and pull the trigger and do this? You probably want to do that before the second half of the same calendar year in which you're actually going to file your application for Permanent Residence here in the Kingdom of Thailand.