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Update Regarding 10 Year Retirement Visas in Thailand

Transcript of the above video:

In previous videos in more than one, we've discussed the plan to implement a 10 year retirement visa in Thailand. Up to now, we've had a regime whereby those who wish to retire in the Kingdom need to get a retirement visa renewed every year on a yearly basis. But there's been plans in the works here to go ahead and implement a scheme by which foreign nationals can receive 10 years of lawful status in the Kingdom for U.S. retirees.

To quote directly from KhaoSod's English website and this is an article by Tiranay Charwuwasra, staff reporter, August 16th, 2017, the title is “Ten-year visa is now available says Thai immigration Bangkok.” To quote directly, “The much-awaited 10-year visa for foreign retirees is now available, the top commander of the immigration police said Wednesday. Those staff seem to be unaware of the announcement.” That's not as me talking, that's not uncommon.”

Oftentimes when these things come down, sometimes the officials sort of work toward the middle of the bottom are not immediately aware of the implementation. To quote further,  “Lieutenant General Natathorn said the new visa will come in two installments of five years each. To quote further and to quote him directly, “It is now effective. Foreigners can apply for that there provincial immigration offices outside Bangkok in neighboring provinces. It’s at Chaeng Watthana.

So basically, we talked about this being proposed in the past. It's now apparently been implemented although as the top immigration officer noted in this article just to paraphrase he said, “He'd yet to see any of the applications come across his desk yet.” As far as how it's going to be implemented, apparently, it's going to happen in two 5-year increments. There's a requirement associated with this which requires a maintenance of a 3 million Baht balance in a Thai bank account in order to be eligible for this visa.

As previously noted, these things can be somewhat I won't say tricky but it's not oftentimes the most straightforward process dealing with regulations and officers of the immigration department here in the Kingdom, not because they're particularly difficult to deal with but because oftentimes, sometimes they don't know about implementation and new rules as is evidenced by the fact that it was even noted within this article. So those who are interested in undertaking application for one of these long term visas which is something of a new development it's probably not a bad idea to go ahead and contact professional legal services to go ahead and get assistance in the process of obtaining the visa. And as it's going to happen in two 5-year increments, having someone on hand to probably assist with the renewal probably wouldn't be a bad idea either.