Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are asking the question; people have been asking me this because we have discussed the LTR, the so-called Long-Term Residence Visa which isn't really Residence as we have discussed. It is really just a long stay visa but it is sort of colloquially now called that. It is sort of like K-3 Visas are often called a US Marriage Visa and it is a US Marriage Visa but really the traditional US Marriage Visa is the CR-1 or the IR-1, Immigrant Spouse Visa. Oftentimes you will see people refer to the K-3, the CR-1 and the IR-1, they will essentially conflate them, they will put them all into the same category and they are not because the K-3 is Non-immigrant Visa and the other ones are Immigrant Visas. Similar in the sense that they call LTR Visas "Residence". No they are just really like a really long Visa; it would be like calling Thailand Elite "Residence", it's not, it's just a really long Visa.

So again getting back to kind of more the thrust of this video is a lot of people have asked me this in the past few weeks: "How many people do I think will actually end up using the LTR?" because a lot of the requirements associated with this are far more substantial than the requirements associated with visas we have seen up to this point, even the Smart Visa. The requirements associated with some of the professionals subcategories of this proposed Visa, which by the way has not come online yet, it's not supposed to come online until it is my understanding September of 2022 and we will keep you updated as to that. But long story short, I said this before and I will say this again, I suspect this will only be utilized by a relatively narrow subset of folks here in Thailand. I think it will be somewhere between the Smart Visa and the Elite Visa in terms of numbers. I think it will probably be less than the people that use Elite and probably more than the people that have used the Smart Visa, if I was speculating. At the end of the day I don't know. We could have a mass influx of people and they all want to get on the LTR. I kind of doubt that, but it could be. Now people have asked me “why do I think that?” Well there are just other options for example for people who want to do business here in Thailand. There are other in my opinion less difficult to overcome the thresholds for hitting certain types of Business Visa and work authorization in other contexts most notably like the Smart Visa depending on circumstances. Again, this is all circumstantially dependent but yeah I don't see a ton of people using it. I do think it's a good idea. I think when it was formulated, the policy thinking behind it is a good idea. I think it will attract a certain number of folks who want to live here in Thailand long term. 

That being said, right now it is kind of being touted as the end all be all and it's my opinion that look yeah it will attract a certain subset of foreigners that want to come here and be here long-term but I don't think it is going to be a Visa category that we are going to see tens of thousands of foreigners jumping into. For example probably right now the most popular Visa option in Thailand is probably Retirement. I have seen numbers on that in the past and it is hard to calculate right now what exactly the numbers are on Retirement Visas, but I would say it is going to be higher there than for example the O Marriage Visa or the Business Visa just because there haven't been a lot of folks coming into Thailand to work here recently and retirees just tend to be kind of sedentary insofar as they are in one place and they don't really move so they just kind of keep renewing their Visas. So it remains to be seen. I hope it adds to the economy of Thailand; I hope it brings in so-called high net worth individuals to Thailand. It would be great, it remains to be seen. We will certainly keep you updated on this channel as the situation progresses.