Transcript of the above video: 

It has been something of an internetsy war between myself and the trolls in the comment section regarding my thoughts on the DTV, and that I have been wrong and I have been misleading people and fear-mongering and things about the DTV, when all I have been trying to say or provide is the reality of the situation which is this thing was entirely rolled out by the Ministry of Affairs, it didn't have anything to do with Interior when they rolled it out. My opinion, while I understand making the policy to get a bunch of people in for high season, it was not good long-term planning because the back end for dealing with all these people has not been really set up and frankly it doesn't look to me like Thai Immigration is particularly inclined to set it up anyway. 

So, I thought of making this video after reading an email from somebody who emailed us and quoting directly, it says: "Hi Ben, I'm a long-term follower of your YouTube channel and generally enjoy your videos, but this isn't the purpose of this email. I know you have been covering what might be involved with DTV renewals and an interesting post came up on a Chiang Mai Facebook group this morning, February 6, that I thought you would be interested in given it discusses hands-on experience dealing Chiang Mai Immigration to extend a DTV.” - and they give this Facebook group, it's Chiang Mai Expats Facebook Group - “I've also added a screenshot for you as well, for your reference. If accurate it would suggest the DTVs are not at all easy to extend and that there is confusion at Immigration Offices about how to extend them as well." I don't know if confusion is the right word, I think it's more like ambivalence to the point of almost hostility because it wasn't their policy to create these visas, they're not really designed to deal with them and therefore they don't really have any inclination to have anything to do with it, which then brings me over to the screenshot. I'm going to throw this up, he gave us this screenshot. Again, tip of the hat, thank you to the viewer who sent us this email. Here's the screenshot, again presumably from this Facebook group Chiang Mai Expats. Quoting directly:

"DTV Extension Denied. 

Hello, I have the DTV Visa (for six months now) and I am living with my Thai wife in in her family home in Chiang Mai. I went to the Chiang Mai Immigration Office today to get my 180 days extension. These are the documents I provided:

• Photocopy of passport, 
• Photo of myself. 
• Bank statement for my US Bank. More than 500,000 requirement in the account. 
• Hand-written letter from my mother-in-law that I'm staying/living in their home.
• Employment letter for my remote work in the US.

The Immigration Officers behind the counter said this is the first they have heard of a DTV extension. They have never done one before."

That's because it basically doesn't exist. There aren't rules promulgated within Immigration to deal with any of this because they were never consulted on any of this. As we discussed this in other videos, again Ministry of Foreign Affairs came up with this, foisted it on the country. Yes we got a good high season out of it because all the people that initially used it to get their initial six months have been here through the high season, but now we're sitting in the afterglow of the party, or maybe the hangover the day after, here in February of '25 and we're seeing the rubber hit the road with regard to this policy. It is not looking the way that all the rosy picture was made at the beginning of this. They said, 'oh you can just extend it in-country.' Well guess what? It's not looking like that is going to be the case. That said, quoting further: "They said they could not extend me because they don't know if my money is in my US account is real or not. They said I need to have a Thai Bank Account. What?"

Yeah, that's how Thai Immigration has always worked. I feel like, "welcome to the party pal" from Die Hard, this is how it goes. Quoting further: "They also said my proof of residency was not sufficient." Yeah, it's not; it's not legal residency; it's not documentation like a house registration book or a residency document that is issued by Immigration itself and even the residency document would be useless because Thai Immigration is issuing their own document, so they didn't prove anything. Again, a Yellow House Book might get you there, but it depends on circumstances. Again, there's no criteria for any of this; there's no legal framework for these extensions; there's no regulatory framework therefore as well, so there's no way to do this stuff. Quoting further: "They also said my proof of residency was not sufficient. I didn't think I needed to be a resident to be a digital nomad. So that is confusing too." Yeah, again, welcome to the party pal. I have been talking about this for over a year. This whole Nomad thing is just a made-up notion, okay, and the mentality associated with this is very entitled. It's like this entitled Globalist Nomad 2.0 stuff. What do you think that means to Thai Immigration? Well, I'm a Nomad. Yeah, they don't want people that are just coming through here without any particular purpose - I'm not being judgmental over the people on this. My real problem is the way this was all framed at the beginning. Again, they talked about this like it was all a foregone conclusion. it's not. They also talked about it at the beginning like people at Immigration would know even what a Nomad is, and what this notion is. That is not what's going on here, okay. This is not how the real bureaucracy works and I'm not making this stuff to be a downer. I know everybody out there is like “oh, he just hates the DTV because this, that and the other thing”. No what I hate is when Thailand gets a bad reputation because of these short-sighted policies because of a bunch of people thinking their expectations make them think they have one benefit when the reality is something totally different: that's my issue in all of this. That said, quoting further: "Has anyone heard of these issues or experienced something similar?" No they haven't yet because there is no mechanism for any of this.

Anything you've been told up to this point is irrelevant pertaining to Thai Immigration here internally. They've made no rules on this; they don't have a policy on this; they weren't in line with this when these “visas” were created. As I have said, Ministry of Foreign Affairs can do whatever they want but they didn't consult Thai Immigration internally, so what does everybody expect? And it's not like I haven't been talking about this for a while so you can't, "oh I was completely not on notice of this." Well, you know, we have been talking about this for like 6 or 8 months. That's why I've been getting so much hate because everybody says that, 'oh it's just you hating on the DTV'. No, it's this exact phenomenon I've been warning people about. That said, quoting further: "Immigration called me back and they said if I can provide additional proof of my connection with my mother-in-law. I'm going to Immigration tomorrow to see if these two documents will solve the issue and will update you." I don't see how it can. Again, there's no fundamental, I just think people are going to spin their wheels with this. Maybe again - on a discretionary basis - you can convince an Immigration Officer on a one-off to give a stamp, but if you're thinking you're going to be able to maintain long-term sort of certain status over the next five years using this - as Mr. Kenyon at the Pattaya Mail has pointed out yeah it doesn't look like that because how do you improve up the intentions 3, 4 years down the road from the original reason you got the visa. 

Again I don't know that this means it's not possible. What it looks like to me is these things are going to effectively long-term, require Border Runs. In the past we used to have these things called one year non-immigrant multiple entry - we usually got Business Visas - but you would see a lot of O Visas, particularly out of Hull in the UK you would see a lot of O Visas come out of there and they were one year and they were 90 days at each entry and you would have to do a Border Run every 90 days. It looks to me like the DTV is effectively that, except you have to do a Border Run every 180 days, that's the way it looks like moving forward to me. I think from what I've seen here, this looks like effectively extension in-country is either a dead letter or it's so subject to such intense discretion that as a practical matter it's not overly feasible on a day-to-day basis. So again, the way that I would look at this is okay, it may be valid but you're definitely going to have to do Border Runs every 180 days which also brings up the fact that it looks like they are building this Digital Tax System specifically around these DTVs and every time you do that 180 day Border Run, if you have already been here the prior 180 days, you're definitely locking in tax jurisdiction and possible liability here in the Kingdom of Thailand.