Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing the Malaysia Residency Program. We discuss other Immigration Systems here in the Southeast Asia region periodically, once in a while. Usually maybe once, maybe a couple of times a month I will kind of peek in to see what is going on in Immigration systems in countries that are nearby Thailand because I do know that folks that travel to this region may not necessarily just come to one country and stick there, they may want to look around so I try to provide some insight where possible. 

I thought of making this video after reading a recent article from the East Asia Forum, that is eastasiaforum.org, the article is titled: Will Thailand's new residency visa achieve results? A lot of information in there, I urge those who are watching this video go check out that article in detail because the thrust of it goes a different way, but this particular excerpt I thought was relevant for this video. Quoting directly: "Neighbouring Malaysia demonstrates the potential of this new Visa Policy to entice wealthy pensioners to Thailand. Since 2002, Malaysia's My Second Home (MM2H) program has provided foreign retirees with a 10 year renewable visa to build a life in Malaysia. It is viewed as a success story in a global market of lifestyle-related Visa options.” Quoting further: “Political wrangling that fueled recent changes to the MM2H program is likely to have undermined consumer confidence in long-term Visa packages in the region. After a pause in applications during the COVID-19 pandemic and uncertainty over the status of existing visa holders, the program re-emerged in October 2021 with higher financial requirements and expectations. By August 2022, the newly revamped MM2H program had received just 267 applications, with a further 1,461 withdrawals." 

This is kind of my reasoning behind why I believe that a lot of these Golden Visa programs as they are sometimes called, these sort of long stay visas, I kind of see this maybe not being a major trend in the years ahead. The reason for it is exactly what they are talking about here with respect to Malaysia where the policy changes and then folks that were in the program essentially fall out of it. So people that are looking at their long-term options sort of look at these programs and say 'hmm, do I really want to get into that because it may change later and I may fall out and I don't want to put all my eggs in that basket so to speak only to find all the eggs are destroyed because I don't have any options left'. 

Again I was talking to somebody the other day we were talking about long-term versus shorter term Visa options, I don't consider 1 year visas to be short-term by any stretch. You can get a one year Visa for example like here in Thailand, the O Retirement Visa, you can get an O Retirement Visa and just continue to extend in one year intervals out sort of into the sunset if you will; that's a pretty good thing. And at least you know, you are aware that year to year you have to do the renewal, things might change in that time; you are not making plans where you saying, 'okay I am moving; I am definitely going to live here forever', and then the rug gets pulled out from underneath you. 

So again, I think it is going to be interesting to watch some of these longer term Visa programs because I think long-term they are going to end up being dealt with, well it's going to be dealt with kind of ad hoc I think on one level, but I honestly think the demand for these will probably diminish over time because at the end of the day, as we have discussed in many different ways on this channel, it really does not end up conferring permanence oftentimes, as noted when discussing this Malaysian program and if it doesn't confer that permanence, then I think there is a lot of folks out there that kind of ask themselves, well what's the point.