Transcript of the above video: 

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing Destination Thailand Visas specifically this notion that it is a foregone conclusion that you will be able to extend your status here in Thailand. There's also, we have done videos on this already, there is also a bunch of talk that Border Runs will be very easy on this type of visa and that it's a foregone conclusion you can just hop in and out. 

Again as discussed in a prior video, all of this information if you will is coming from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and as we have discussed in prior videos, Ministry of Foreign Affairs does not have authority over Immigration matters here in Thailand. The Immigration Bureau does and they are under the auspices of the Ministry of Interior. So when you hear this stuff, you need to take it with a big grain of salt because quite honestly the people that have said these things, are not necessarily the people that are going to be making the adjudications in the future. What am I talking about here? 

I thought of making this video after reading a recent article from the Pattaya Mail, that is pattayamail.com, the article is titled: Immigration and the new Government. Quoting directly: "The DTV allows those who report to a foreign company and/or have overseas clients to receive a multiple entry 5-year Visa with an extension at local Immigration..." So it is already being packaged as that it is a foregone conclusion. An 'extension' is an adjudication and for anybody who has ever dealt with Immigration here in Thailand, it's usually a pretty protracted adjudication and scrutiny is quite stringent. Quoting further: "...allows them to remain in the Kingdom for up to 360 days (180 on entry + 180 at extension)." Again, presuming the extension, and again all this talk has come primarily from Ministry of Foreign Affairs. I even wonder if they even consulted Immigration regarding these things because look Immigration guards their prerogatives pretty zealously. I don't blame them because they have a task of maintaining order within the Kingdom among the foreigners who are in the Kingdom. So again, the notion that it's a foregone conclusion that you are just going to be able to get an extension on this, I think that's an imprudent presumption to make. Quoting further: "They must then "leave the country" to repeat the procedure." Again, they are sort of accentuating the positive while leaving out that there is a great deal further that goes into this. And what worries me about this, I think people think I am mad about this for a variety of different reasons. I don't know, I've been accused of a million things, burned in comments, whatever, but what worries me about this is I have seen this happen multiple times. They come out with some new idea and then in practice it doesn't work the way that it's "supposed to" and then it just causes more negative sort of vibes; it just causes more negative feedback, more negative reaction down the road and that's what I'm trying to forestall in these videos quite honestly is the notion that it's a presumption that you are going to be able to just do a border hop, or a presumption that you can just get a quick extension. That's very unlikely to be how it works. After 17 years of living here, after 17 years of dealing with the Thai Immigration apparatus, quite honestly I can say with a degree of certainty, bordering on total and absolute certainty, that that is not how that's going to work. Quoting further: "The unclear bits here are whether the remote workers, contracts or portfolio of work need to be updated or whether no further checks are made for the 5-year duration." I'm here to tell you, you are talking about 5 years of lawful status in Thailand. Immigration is going to be scrutinizing that and prior procedures dictate that they are going to be scrutinizing that at least on a year to year basis. And anybody that has ever dealt with the Business Visa unit, or anybody dealing with work authorization type of visas, is going to know that the documentation and the scrutiny associated with that is substantial. 

So this notion and these people who don't know what they are talking about, running around out there saying "oh this is the easiest visa in the world and everything's just going to be hunky dory", are not doing anyone any favours because they are causing people, in my opinion, to detrimentally rely on a Visa that down the road will probably not operate the way it was originally advertised.

I wanted to make this sort of bumper to let folks know about Visa packages or Immigration packages here in Thailand. There have been a lot of changes to Immigration laws, rules, protocols and procedures roughly the last year or so. Well no the last five years in earnest but in the last year, we have seen even more acute changes if you will. For this reason, I want to make everybody aware we have a Border Run service here in our office; we assist people in setting up Border Runs. Now to be clear, that's not all we do and this is kind of more of a bespoke thing where we set up Border Runs for folks to assist them in maintaining lawful Immigration status here in the Kingdom. We also can assist with different types of visas, not just the newer ones which by the way just because a Visa is new, doesn't necessarily mean it's a great thing; there are ups and downs to all types of Visas. So the thing to take away from this, what I am trying to make a point is in this sort of bumper video is we are assisting with Border Runs; we do always assist with Thai Immigration. Anybody that is interested in those services, please feel free to contact us.