Transcript of the above video: 

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing Thailand Privilege or Elite Visas, but specifically we're discussing passports in connection therewith. I have got to be honest with you, this is another video on how frankly the services and benefits associated with Thailand Elite are looking a little less than the optimality that it was described as some years ago, especially when people got into this program. And frankly, I've had my critiques of the way that the Elite Visa System has been administered over the years. My personal opinion at this point - in a more broad sense, not just with regard to the Elite Visa - with regard to a lot of other things, we really need comprehensive immigration reform, a new Immigration Act by Parliament, and we need to stop having this panoply of all these different visas, and they all have different sort of requirements. And then on top of it, they are all treated differently from a law enforcement perspective or an immigration enforcement perspective when it comes to practical application of, I won't even say regulations, but call them administrative guidelines pertaining to scrutiny of these visas, it's not a great place to be. And I've done the videos on this; I've had folks write me emails as we're going to get into here talking about it, saying more and more I'm wondering how great this whole thing was. But at the end of the day, there was sort of an optimal time in my mind for the Elite Visa, back when you can get 20 years for a million baht, I think that was pretty good value for money and things. But honestly, the changes with regard to how they are administered down the road, it's just; again I think comprehensive immigration reform, sort of hit the reset button and getting a new body of law that we just in good faith try to administer, would probably be better than having all these different regulations, wildly different for the same Visa in different places, and then also, all these different visas with questionable legal foundation under them in many cases, making all these claims about what these visas can accord and then when people arrive here, it's not as advertised. And people have gotten angry at me over criticism especially of the Destination Thailand Visa for the exact reason that turned out to be why I was critiquing it in the first place, which was it wasn't delivering what it even sort of was implicitly claiming to be delivering when people were trying to get it. So just across the board I think a good overhaul of the Immigration System might not be a bad idea. 

That said, I thought of making this video after reading a recent email from a viewer. I am going to leave him anonymous; tip of the hat to you. Quoting directly: "This latest deterioration of service for Elite Visa holders may be of interest." And this person sent, To the attention of me and it just says Announcement on Advanced Notice Requirement for Thailand Privilege Visa, Elite Visa Renewal at Immigration Division 2, Immigration Suvarnabhumi Airport. And the forwarded message is actually from the Thailand Privilege Card folks, thailandprivilege.co.th. That said, let me quote what this person said because I think their synopsis pretty much sums it up. Quoting directly: "This latest deterioration of service for Elite Visa holders may be of interest. Basically if you get a new passport, you have to wait 2 months before you can re-enter Thailand and get your Elite Visa with your new passport. So for UK folks it would be 3 months, assuming you get your new passport within a month. When you get to Thailand you will be questioned about money and why you have stayed so long despite the Elite being sold as a non-hassle alternative to a Retirement Visa. I wish I'd listened to Ben and never paid for Elite. There's no way Elite will last another 5 years. Who would pay a substantial amount of money to be treated like this?" Look, those are speculative sort of statements there at the end but yeah, again there was a moment in there - especially that million baht for the sort of 'No Frills' Elite Visa, that was value for money, and I think people got a good deal on that. But over time they have just changed it around and honestly it goes back to a mainstay - I don't want to get too political in these videos moving forward - but I talked about this over the summer; I talked about this before. It goes back to a certain faction in politics here that have highly politicized Immigration and introduced, I made a video, oh really another rich guy Visa, that's what we need because there had been so many of them to that point and I mean what more can be granted? I mean the point I am trying to make is this politicization of the Immigration Process has led to bad outcomes. The Elite Visa itself was created that way and it's the first one that was created as one of these parallel track of "oh, because we say so we are going to do this visa", and it has this weird private component and stuff. Again I've been critical of this in the past and I don't want to see anybody, especially in the Expat community get hurt. So if you've got the Visa, I think you should be able to get the terms of that Visa that you detrimentally relied upon when you got into the system; I think that's only fair. 

That being said, I think it would be a better idea to think out some of these policies and things because they have ramifications. I'm making another video contemporaneously with this one where I ask the question is this sort of a harbinger of things to come for things like the DTV and other visas out there, and I think it probably is. Where they make this stuff up out of whole cloth and it's done in a politicized way and it's not either extracted regulatorily from the underlying law i.e. the Immigration Act of 1979 or some other actual body of law that you can point at and say, "look this is where the regulatory authority came from to create this visa", when it's just sort of made up on the fly. Down the road we have these policy problems because nobody knows what the parameters of the Visa are because there's no definition to it. So again, my personal opinion is I think Parliament should take this up. I mean last time it was really taken up in a legislative manner was 1979. It might be time to go ahead and think about overhauling that. 

That said, in the meantime between that possibility which may never happen and now, we will certainly be keeping you updated on this channel as the situation evolves.