Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing O Retirement Visas and the future thereof. I got to thinking about this when reading a recent article from the Thai Examiner, thaiexaminer.com, the article is titled: Wealthy foreigners to own small land holdings associated with homes here agreed in principal. Basically this excerpt doesn't really have a lot to do with the title. Quoting further: New regulations do not yet impact the more popular Non-Immigrant O Visas for Marriage and Retirement. Quoting directly: "These new arrangements do not impact current requirements for Non-Immigrant O Visas or extensions either for Marriage or Retirement visas for now but may signal future intentions by the Government which have also been regularly aired publicly by senior officials." First of all, "senior officials" have aired a lot of things publicly that have not come to pass from "travel bubbles" to various announcements of the end of the COVID Amnesty. We have seen a lot of talk that has not come to fruition about a number of different things. 

Long story short, my opinion do I think that even in the long term there is the threat that the O Retirement Visa will fall by the wayside? Not really. I am not overly concerned about this and one of my major reasons for this is the fact that there are always going to be, especially as they get older, retirees who aren't going to meet the plethora of requirements that some of these for example the O-A or the O-X or don't even get me started on these new so-called LTR, Long-Term Resident although it is not really a Resident Visa but Long-Term Visas for wealthy retirees which in my opinion resembles pretty clearly the O-X Visa. All of these things are out there and at the end of the day what happens if you start off eligible for those and as time goes by you are no longer eligible? That is just one example. For example you age out of being able to get insurance to maintain for example O-A status. Well the O Retirement Visa doesn't have that requirement, so I think that that O Retirement Visa is there as sort of a fallback catch-all for a certain number of retirees that can't meet certain requirements.

Also don't take your eye off this particular issue, especially in the forthcoming couple of years. Thailand is going to need Tourist Revenue; it is going to need Expat Revenue. I don't see where there is going to be any kind of policy at all of trying to keep out people who can meet the basic requirements associated with a Thai O Retirement Visa. I just don't see it. It doesn't make any sense from an economic or policy standpoint and I just don't see it happening within this decade. Now I have been wrong before and if I am, I will stand corrected but I don't think I will be. I do believe, the Thai O Retirement Visa as it is, is going to be with us for a long time to come.