Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing online visa extensions. That was in the news recently last week, the Immigration Bureau came out, it's been all over on the internet, I'm not even going to cite anything on this. You can look it up, Google it, that they will be allowing folks, there's a pilot program here in Bangkok. Thai Immigration will begin a pilot program to allow folks to do their visa extensions online through the Immigration Bureau, again Bangkok only. Then hopefully they are going to use this as a pilot program to see how it works in the longer term. 

A couple of things, points to ponder, notes if you will. First off, as we all know with respect to the 90-day reporting online system, this thing is not foolproof. We've seen people over the years that have continued to have issues with that and just kind of prefer to deal with their 90-day reporting in person. That looks like it's going to similarly be the case, I shouldn't say it looks like, but let's say it's not illogical to think that we might see the same issues associated with this online visa extension as we have seen in the past with the 90-day reporting or at least we are going to see them kind of until they get the "bugs" out. 

Another major issue, and we have other videos forthcoming on this that I made contemporaneously with this one, is that not all Visa categories are subject to this online extension. It looks like at least for now it is only going to apply to Tourist Visas and Visa exemption folks who are looking to get an extension of status while here in the country. It does not appear to apply at least presently for Non-Immigrant Visas, visas associated with non-immigrant status here in Thailand and I suspect that's for a pretty good reason for example the Thai Business Visa, the documentation associated with extension of that is quite cumbersome, in fact it is quite Byzantine in many ways. So yeah dealing with that is not exactly going to be a straightforward endeavour and I can see where that process just can't necessarily be digitized. So it's interesting and we will definitely keep you updated on this channel as the situation evolves.