Transcript of the above video:

Probably for the first time in the entire time I've done these videos - which is going on 10 years now, and going on some we've already hit 8,500 I think at this point, we're going for 10,000 and the moon thereafter, whatever - this may be the first time, maybe the only time I only quote a clause from an article. So I thought of making this video after reading a recent article from the Bangkok Post, bangkokpost.com, the article is titled: Phuket up in arms on long-stay visa. And then the clause I want to quote just says: "according to the Immigration Bureau" and then it goes into bla, bla, bla. I'll get into that another videos. 

This whole long-stay visa, it popped up back, I think it was like October, November was when we first started hearing the kind of whispers of it, and then it sort of percolated further up to the Immigration Bureau that "oh yeah, yeah, there are these long stay visas" and it was sort of loosely associated with condo ownership, renting a condo and you may be able to get one of these long-stay visas. The reason for the video, I'm not getting into this to say long-stay visa is good, bad or indifferent. This is one of those things where foreigners grab a hold of - "well according to the Immigration Bureau" - yeah, according to the Immigration Bureau back during COVID, all sorts of things were true that weren't true. According to the Immigration Bureau we were supposed to have travel bubbles; that never happened. I made tons of videos on that during Covid. Again, I know we're not in Covid but understand something here. Immigration Bureau may say many different things. At the end of the day, policy will end up being made at usually a higher level than the Immigration Bureau itself, and oftentimes people that are talked to by the press and things from an Immigration Bureau might not be the ones with the ultimate say even within that Immigration Bureau. 

The only point I'm trying to make and as the title suggests, is "grain of salt with everything you read or hear about with respect immigration unless you yourself are processing something through the system". I've said this many, many times. I haven't said it recently, but in the old days I talked about this a lot: US Immigration, Thai Immigration, any immigration case is like a snowflake. They are all unique, they all are different, and again sort of listening to broad information, broad-based advice, even when it says "according to the Immigration Bureau" is not always the best way to do things. I'm not saying it's not something to listen to; I'm not saying it's not a data point to keep in mind, but especially to all these new nomads and new expats out here or looking to be new nomads and expats - you are all kind of new from where I'm sitting - but that being said no harm, no foul; we have all been new. In fact, young guys out there, keep that new guy shirt on as long as you can; that's the best thing to be is the new guy here. 

That being said, the point of this is even if it's "according to immigration" it can change. Look there was a time when you could get an O Visa based on condo ownership; that went away. There were people that managed to keep them for longer than even they said the policy had ended, but it ultimately did. Things are fluid in the Immigration System. The point of this video is not one way or the other, whether anything is right, wrong, true, false, accurate, inaccurate, it's just a matter of keep your mind open and realize that each case processes in its own unique way.