Transcript of the above video:

So as the title of this video suggests, we are discussing Thai Retirement Visas yet again. Specifically we are discussing recent comments made by Police General Surachate "Big Joke" Hakparn with regard to Thai Retirement Visas in the context of an article from the Bangkok Post wherein they were primarily, I mean ostensibly the article was supposed to be about law enforcement and what appeared to be foreign criminal elements in Thailand and then within the article, there was this sort of tangent that went off talking about Retirement Visas and Immigration Policy. Now as I have discussed in other videos made contemporaneously with this one, Stickman Bangkok brought up the fact that, in an article he recently wrote, yeah this is not infrequent where you see situations involving foreign nationals accused of or involved in crimes here in Thailand, there's oftentimes a backlash from the Thai establishment if you will or maybe the Thai Immigration System, Thai Law enforcement wherein they really start looking, they start scrutinizing if you will Thai Immigration Law as it pertains to foreigners; this happens frequently. 

That said, I thought of making this video after reading a recent article from the Pattaya Mail, that is pattayamail.com, the article is titled: Top Thai Cop urges Retirement Visa rules to be tightened. Quoting directly: "The context of this interview was the all-importance of getting rid of foreign motorbike gangs plaguing Pattaya, Phuket and Koh Samui in particular." Now again, as they are noting in this article yeah, that was the thrust of the original article that “Big Joke” was talking in so it seemed a little odd to say the least that it then went in this direction where it went into like great detail about Retirement Visas etc. so again quoting further: "Sociologists called this approach "deviancy amplification" as it highlights one particular criminal issue in order to justify policy action against a much wider group in society." I don't know if it is that. The term kind of stuck out at me so I read it and I went and looked it up briefly and I said well it's not too far off to necessarily call it that but again also that is to assume that there is something criminal about just standard retirees in Thailand and quite honestly there really isn't. At the end of the day, again, it is my understanding that the whole thing is merely about allegations at this point. We don't know exactly what happened with regard to the underlying case at hand in the original article in which Police General Surachate was talking about issues related to Retirement Visas so I am not going to speculate on that per se. But yeah I guess you could say there is something of an odd combination in talking about law enforcement on one hand and then just general visa policy regarding retirees on another; it seems a little strange.

That being said, this Retirement Visa thing to my mind was not totally out of the blue. We have discussed issues associated with insurance and the O versus the O-A category for some time now. I have never thought it was particularly outside the realm of possibility that we could see changes on that policy. Meanwhile it has been that since the late '90s that we have seen any change with regard to the financial requirements. Now that is not to say that the passage of time necessitates a change in the rules but it does stand to reason, it's just kind of human nature that as time goes on, if something has just sort of been a certain way for a period of time that from time to time they will look in and review it basically. So from that standpoint, it doesn't look to me to be totally out of the ordinary the notion that "hey somebody's maybe looking at changing X requirement or Y requirement associated with the Retirement Visa scheme”. However I must admit, it was a little bit odd to see all of this analysis and discussion of Retirement Visas in an article that was initially primarily about law enforcement.