Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing the proposed, yet to be promulgated, Long-Term Resident Visas that everybody is talking about here in Thailand and we are sort of comparing this to kind of a now semi-forgotten relic in the Immigration toolbox which is the O-X Retirement Visa. The O-X Retirement Visa in a way was somewhat similar to these kind of LTRs that are coming online. 

I got to thinking about this when reading a recent article from the Pattaya Mail, that is pattayamail.com, the article is titled: Thailand's expat retirees face yet another visa choice. Quoting directly: "The LTR is yet another try at catching a rich expat market believed by Thai Authorities to be in the millions worldwide. In 2016, the Government introduced a 10-year O-X Visa for retirees and their families. It has not proved popular because of the weighty registration bureaucracy required, ongoing checks on bank balances and the need to keep substantial cash reserves in Thailand. Uniquely, this Visa promised retirees they could work as volunteers subject to agreement by the Ministry of Labour. It does require ongoing Medical insurance."

So they brought out the O-X and I remember people were pretty psyched about it. Then as a practical matter it tended to be a very narrow subset of folks that even qualified for it and of that subset it has been my experience, a lot of them just either went for a normal Retirement Visa or went to the Thailand Elite program. Now I can say just from watching the things evolve here, policy makers seem serious about the Long Term Resident Visa which by the way is not a Resident Visa; we have discussed as many times on this channel. It is kind of a misnomer that just has kind of stuck out there. It is a Non-immigrant Visa; it is a long-term Non-Immigrant Visa. It appears at least as the time of this video that, there's Thai Permanent Residence which is covered by one section of the Immigration Act and then there is another section pertaining to Non-Immigrants and this would appear to fall under that unless they are going to amend the Act, which that may happen, I don't know but it doesn't appear that that is likely. It looks like this is just going to be a new regulatory structure for a new category of Visa which is allowed under the Act. It can be rolled out regulatorily. But again as we have discussed many times when we are talking about this topic, this has yet to happen.

We have yet to actually see the regulations put in place and therefore we have yet to be able to see where the rubber hits the road with respect to the practicalities of actually getting one of these LTR Visas. It may and I really hope it does turn out to be a real draw for Thailand. At the same time, we have some precedence for visas that have been rolled out that are useful to certain people, the O-X for example, certain aspects of the Smart Visa program, but were not really broadly adopted by the vast majority of expats here in the Kingdom of Thailand.