Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing Permanent Residence in Thailand. For those who keep track of this channel or are just aware in a more general context, the window for applying for Permanent Residence generally opens in the fourth quarter of a given calendar year. So that kind of begs the question "Why are you making this video in April?" The reason is if you are really serious about applying for Permanent Residence, you should look at getting your ducks in a row now. This is the time; this is in my opinion the kind of the happy medium, the "Sweet Spot" if you will in terms of getting prepared because it is going to take months to put together the documentation. It is not just a matter of showing up at that window and saying "Hey I qualify, I want to go ahead and apply", you need to be ready; you need to be proactive and they may throw curveballs that you need to be ready for at the time you are going to actually submit the application. We deal with the number of these cases every year and it has been our experience that at the end of the first quarter, getting into the beginning of the second quarter of the year is the optimum time to go ahead and begin putting together your petition. I mean petition packages they look like a phone book. I don't even know if people, younger viewers might not even know what a phone book is but I mean they are thick; they are a big pile of paper associated with one's status in Thailand as well as ones identity documentation, a lot of certified documentation from people's home countries are required. It is a lot of work and it is a good idea to be way ahead of that in terms of getting that put together.

I just wanted to go ahead and show this. This is actually sort of the end result, the alien registration book. This is kind of the end result of the Thai Permanent Residence process if you will. It is kind of the culmination and there is a ton of documentation unfortunately associated with PRs. There is a blue Book, your house book you may be in, you have got this alien registration book, there is also travel documentation including your Immigrant Visa associated with coming and going from Thailand but this is kind of the core document in my mind. This is kind of the crux documentation. In many ways this is very much akin to a Thai ID card and for those who are watching this video, yes I know there are ID cards for foreign nationals but if you go back into the '70s, the '60s and beyond there weren't. For those who wanted Permanent Residence in Thailand, they had to get one of these. They had to get an alien registration book and that was the core document for maintaining, that is their identity document effectively for maintaining status here in Thailand. If you can't tell, these are pretty old. In fact I would love to know when the last tranche of these was created. I suspect it was during the Ford Administration if we are looking at in timelines of American Presidents. But yeah, they happen every year as we have noted on this video before. They open the window for application every year; it usually takes a number of months to process a petition and the end result being this being issued. There is also a certificate of Permanent Residence kind of similar to a Certificate of Nationality associated with naturalization to Thai citizenship but again this is kind of the core document. Those that have one of these, it is very much akin to a Thai ID card. It is not totally analogous because obviously a Thai ID card identifies one as a Thai National but this is the core identity document, the core document for maintaining your Residence here in the Kingdom of Thailand.