Transcript of the above video:

The reason for the quote in the title is I was recently reading a Bangkok Post article, a lot of information in here. I really urge folks who are watching this video go check it out. The article is titled: Grimaces replace smiles for retirees. Every time I hear "grimace", I always think of the big purple guy from McDonald's of days of yore. 

Leaving that aside this was actually an interview conducted with the Immigration Bureau Deputy Commander, Police Major General Achayon Kraithong. There is a lot of information in there. Again I urge folks who are watching this to go read that for yourself because he does a pretty thorough Q&A. They get into some interesting stuff but the byline here says: Interview: Law still imposes plenty of curbs on what foreigners can do. While I would say that is true in a retiree context, it stems from the fact that Retirement Visas are not work authorized. I am not going to point out the Bangkok Post exactly. I understand the media does what it does and it tries to get broad numbers of people to read things that are on their platforms. But yeah look most foreigners can do quite a lot here in Thailand if you go through proper channels. Set up a Company for example if you want to be self-employed. If you are looking to be employed by an employer here in Thailand and they sponsor you for a Work Permit you can work in Thailand, or set yourself up and self-employed in Thailand. As we have discussed there are other benefits under things like the Board of Investment, BOI, there is the Smart Visa program out there; there are a lot of avenues out there but this article was specifically looking at retirees. 

I have to say I know I am probably going to get burned a lot for this and while I do understand there is some concern among retirees, they do want to have some more options here in Thailand, my response to that is it was set up as a Retirement Visa. I am not trying to be an apologist, it just is what it is. The thinking is you are retired, you are coming here to just be retired and working is not sort of in the cards so to speak. Now I do understand different people's situation is different depending on their circumstances but I also kind of on this one understand where the Thai Government is coming from, where they say look "retirement is retirement is retirement". If you are looking to come here and just be done working, we are happy to have you. 

Now in a lot of ways and I will be the first one to say this: "Could retirees be treated better?" Yeah probably in a lot of ways, but as far as the work authorization thing, that has never been part and parcel of the Retirement Visa. Now I know they are kind of talking about it; they have approved things in principle and all of this kind of stuff with respect to these possible new visas for high-end, high net worth, wealthy folks whatever you want to call it, we have yet to actually see any regulations be promulgated so they remain kind of off in the ether and quite frankly and I have said this before in other videos, especially like the Smart Visa, I suspect there will only be a narrow subset of folks that these new visas apply to. I doubt it will be a real broad category. I could be wrong, I have been wrong before, that is certainly possible. 

The thing to take away from this video is I just don't think it is fair to call something a "curb" when that was how it was invented. The Retirement Visa was invented without work authorization. That has always been a hallmark of that status. If you want to come in and retire in Thailand, happy to have you, but it is specifically designed for retirees.