Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing O-A Retirement Visas. Now to be clear, we are not talking about O Retirement Visas. O Retirement Visas are issued oftentimes though not always, there are limited circumstances where this may not be the case, but O Retirement Visas are oftentimes issued here in Thailand under the auspices of Immigration, under the auspices of the Ministry of Interior and it is an O Retirement extension. It is a Visa but it is an extension issued here in Thailand. This is a different animal from the O-A Retirement Visa which is basically only issued abroad and it can only be extended here in Thailand. 

Now, there is a lot of confusion that swirls the expiration issue with respect to the O-A. What are we talking about here? Well going back years back now when this first came up, I kind of forget that we kind of talk about this and people that are new to the channel they haven't been listening to me rattle on about this stuff for years at this point, and I kind of forget that the evolution of the O-A, to people that are just now retiring it is probably really kind of mind-boggling notwithstanding the fact that in my mind it is kind of simplified in my head. What am I talking about? The O-A is a multiple entry Visa meaning the actual sticker, the Visa sticker or if it is issued digitally but call it the Visa sticker, it has an end date but every time you enter you don't necessarily get the visa until that end date, you could get it for a year. We used to have multi-entry Business Visas not to get too far off on a tangent, and even though it had an end expiration date, if you got in right before the expiration you would get 90 days and it would go past the expiration. In the case of an O-A Retirement Visa, it is possible to get a year at each entry if you come and go, to get a year at each entry. There was a time when people would use the O-A to get essentially 2 years’ worth of Retirement Visa out of it. They would get it in the States, they do their year; they do a Border Run right before the underlying sticker expired, come back in and get another year. That all changed with insurance and that is about to change a lot more come October when the insurance requirement goes up, way up; it goes up to $100,000 in coverage necessary for the O-A and we will get into that when it sort of ripens up a little bit more. 

The long story short on this is when they brought in insurance, it created the discretion not even the discretion, the requirement on the part of the Immigration Officer to sync up that retiree's lawful presence in Thailand with the expiration of the Visa or specifically, excuse me not only the expiration of the visa, they may sync that up too, but also the expiration of the insurance. So what I am talking about is if you have got 6 months insurance left, even though in the old days when you would come in on an O-A you would get a year, if you only have 6 months of insurance left on an O-A right now as of the time of this video, you would come in and you would only get 6 months based on the insurance, not based on anything having to do with the regulations pertaining to Thai Immigration Law, or I should say the old regulations which used to say "oh you come in, you get a year, you just get a one-year stamp". You no longer get that, you get a stamp for as long as your insurance is valid on the O-A Visa. Again this does not apply to the O Retirement Visa, it only applies to the O-A Retirement Visa.