Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are asking is there a panic among retirees regarding Thai Immigration Policy? I thought of making this video after reading a recent article from the Pattaya Mail, that is pattayamail.com, the article is titled: My take on Pattaya September 2023: Walking Street so quiet. Quoting directly: "There seems to be a lot of panic amongst Pattaya expats that Compulsory Medical Insurance is about to hit all Retirement Visa holders rather than just those with O/A." That is the O-A Retirement Visa. For those who are unaware, O-A Retirement Visas presently require medical insurance, O Retirement Visas do not; there's a differential between the two subcategories. Quoting further: "I've been asking around but I don't get the impression anything like that is brewing. It's true that "Big Joke", (that's Surachate "Big Joke" Hakparn, presently the Deputy National Police, formerly the head of Thai Immigration), quoting further: "a Deputy National Police Chief did say weeks ago that annual extensions of stay were too easy to obtain, but he's a very busy guy with many public statements to his credit. I rather think that the Immigration Bureau will be consumed in the near and medium term future by the government's plan to boost the tourist cash registers by admitting millions more Chinese tourists without any prior bureaucracy and application procedures being necessary." 

Again, I tend to kind of disagree with that assessment. Look Thai Immigration has been used to dealing with high volumes of tourists for years. Thailand before the pandemic had some 40 million tourists arriving in the year I believe that led directly up to that and the year prior to that it was some 35 odd million, I mean Thailand is used to dealing with a large number of tourists. I don't think an influx of new tourists is going to overly impact Non-Immigrant Visa policy, that's policy for folks, foreigners specifically looking to live in Thailand long term; I don't think that's going to happen. Now should a panic be out there? No. When I talked in the prior videos about these remarks, I said look nothing has changed. We haven't seen legal changes, we haven't seen regulatory changes as noted in that article, the author of that said "doesn't see anything like that brewing". I think that's well put. I don't see anything like that in the direct horizon. 

Now that said, look Immigration Policies evolve over time. It is possible we could see changes down the line. As I have discussed in many other videos, my present belief is that if any major changes are made to the Retirement Visa structure, some kind of "grandfathering" is going to be allowed where people aren't just going to be sort of thrown for a loop after years of living as retirees in Thailand maintaining their status lawfully. I think folks, especially based on prior evidence from the '90s when things changed with regard to the Retirement Visa at that time and they did "grandfather in" the folks that were under Retirement Visa status, under prior terms to that point. Again it doesn't necessarily act as a precedent because that is not necessarily binding in the Thai system, but I think we can look to the past to ascertain what it would look like in the future, if these major changes were to come down. So my point being is that panic amongst the already existing retiree expat community is in my opinion unwarranted, because I think in the long term, if they do make changes, I don't think they are going to make changes toward the end of 2023 going into high season, I think that is unlikely. But if they do make changes on a longer-term basis, I think that there is ample evidence to suggest that we will see folks who are already in the system be "grandfathered in" moving forward.