Transcript of the above video: 

As the title of this video suggests, we are asking the question, are there "better options" for those who wish to be in Thailand long term, better than the standard Retirement Visa or the O-A Retirement Visa or the Marriage Visa? I thought of making this video after reading a recent email to us from a viewer, quoting directly: "Hi Ben, watch your YouTube videos, and love them. I have a question and wonder if other people have questioned the same thing. For the DTV only 500,000 is required for a once-off application with no renewal and 5-year expiry, but with a Marriage Visa 400,000 baht is required, pretty much to stay in the bank and definitely for an annual renewal. How is it that a person living under a real long-term Visa seems to be penalized with such annual renewals, with finance checks etc. required but someone on DTV does not need same checks and can go five years without any questions. It seems very strange this system, as you are probably aware." 

So I, for the title of the video, I stuck in retirement as well. I think this analysis applies to both. Although it's noteworthy that in the case of a Marriage Visa, it is 400,000 baht proven in a bank account or 40,000 Baht a month in income, compared to 500,000 in a bank account shown in association with a DTV application. Meanwhile the Retirement Visa requires 800,000 Baht in a bank account or 65,000 Baht in basically pension income. 

Now a couple of assumptions made about the DTV here. “How is it that a person living under a real long-term Visa seems to be penalized with no such annual renewals?" Well they don't have non-annual renewals; they can't stay for a year.  There's a minimum that they either have to leave or apply to extend in country which is not exactly a forgone conclusion from the situation we've seen at Immigration, but they have to do that every 6 months as opposed to a year. So DTV holders don't get 5 years of unfettered status, they get 6 months per entry, or they are re-adjudicated for extension every 6 months. There are some nebulous aspects to this because we don't quite know exactly how it's going to play out because the Visa is so new, but it's also my understanding that extensions are not perpetual. This was designed as a “Nomad Visa” if you will and it means you're not able to necessarily to just live here on the visa. As I have discussed in other videos, unfortunately this was not well thought out in its creation because frankly it was created by only one faction of an overall coalition government. That creation occurred within the Ministry of Foreign Affairs which has no remit for matters pertaining to internal Thailand. So it was sort of foisted on the internal immigration apparatus to just deal with it and again it's not a yearly renewal. It's every 6 months if you can even extend in-country or it requires a Border Run every 6 months. So that's something really fundamental to understand about it. Moreover, quoting again from this: "But someone on a DTV does not need same checks and can go five years without any questions." Well that is the big question. Is it possible to just go five years without any question? And I think the answer is No. Clearly, I don't think we know exactly what this is going to look like, but we do know from its creation and from how it has been handled that they are scrutinizing it heavily. So it's not necessarily a foregone conclusion that you can just live for 5 years unfettered. The Visa hasn't even gotten to that age yet; it's not even a year and a half old yet. Is it even a year old at this point? Because it came in with Paetongtarn coming in so it's right at the one-year mark where this is coming, this has only existed for a year. It remains to be seen how this is going to play out. In much the same way I have my hesitancy about the LTR Visa because of the possibility that it may be a tax trap but we're just simply not going to know until people that got into the system get to their five-year mark and have to deal with the audit associated with extending their status. With the DTV, we just don't know that it's going to be “without question”. I think it's going to be quite the opposite. In fact I think when we see this probable new Government - whatever it looks like - come in after the elections next year, I think this, other immigration initiatives that have happened in the past roughly 5 years, along with many other Immigration issues are probably going to come to the foreground in Parliament. The late Barry Kenyon brought this up. He mentioned that he thought that the incoming Parliament would probably start looking at some kind of Immigration legislation; I thought it probably wouldn't. My thinking at the time was, No, I doubt that, because frankly immigrants don't have a big constituency. I'm changing my view on that. As things have evolved especially this matter pertaining to the Border, I think the paradigm has shifted within the Thai polity, within the citizenry here regarding Immigration, so yeah, I actually think we are going to probably see a major Immigration overhaul next year, or stemming from the Parliament that comes in next year. 

Now that said, for the foreign community, that's not necessarily a good thing, okay? As I've discussed in many other videos, new immigration legislation often makes things harder. Now meanwhile, one of the reasons I really, really like the standard Non-Immigrant Visas, especially the standard O Retirement Visa, is the times that they have changed it going back into the '90s they have grandfathered in those who are already in the system. The DTV is a completely new creation, so I think you are much more likely to be able to rely on the fact that if they massively overhaul the Immigration System, they are at least likely to give people who are in at least, at the very least, I think they are more likely to just grandfather everyone in and say, "look you already had that Visa as of this date; we will continue to renew you under the terms you came in under, and then we will change it thereafter." That said, they may not do that, but I expect they would give a grace period, a substantial grace period to those who are already in the system if we do see a massive overhaul. I do not think the same can be said for DTV, again because DTV was entirely the brainchild of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs which operates abroad and really no consensus domestically was garnered to create that visa and it was just sort of foisted on the internal immigration apparatus. So I don't think it's a foregone conclusion that it will be treated one way or the other; the DTV, in the event that we do see a major immigration shake up. Now again, that's not a foregone conclusion. 

The point of this video though is doing the comparison between DTV and Retirement Visa, it's apples and bowling balls; they're not the same thing. Again, to say, "oh, there's less criteria associated with the DTV than the O Retirement Visa", for example, well yeah except for the fact that it requires a Border Run every 6 months; it's fundamentally different than the O Retirement Visa that you can just renew on a yearly basis and just deal with here in-country. It’s substantially different to the detriment of those using the DTV. I have said before look, if you otherwise qualify for a standard O Retirement Visa, that really is to my mind the most cost-effective, most beneficial travel document for folks who are looking to be here long term because again its history and because of the fact that again it's renewable on a yearly basis. It's also a clear Non-immigrant Visa. It's not one of these sort of nebulous creations of Ministry of Foreign Affairs that is just kind of shoe-horned into the legal apparatus or the legal framework that creates the Immigration apparatus. So again, in many ways I think it's a far more "stable" if you will visa. Now if you're under 50, if you're not married to a Thai, you don't otherwise qualify for a non-immigrant Visa, the DTV Visa, again depending on your circumstances, may be the absolute best option for you. Again, it's going to depend on the specific facts in the underlying case that are going to sort of drive the analysis as to what is the best type of visa to remain long term here in the Kingdom of Thailand.