Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing Thailand Elite visas and whether or not there is a physical presence requirement associated with such status. I thought of making this video after watching a recent video by my friend and colleague Andrew Esquire on the Go East Asia channel here on YouTube. We met personally and got along pretty well and he is looking at sort of regional issues associated with foreign nationals, particularly Westerners looking to move to Asia and he was doing a video, I will go ahead and link it up in the description below, he was doing a video regarding Malaysia My Second Home which we have discussed kind of briefly on this channel before.

Malaysia My Second Home or MM2H allows folks of foreign nationality to effectively reside in Malaysia for a prolonged period of time and we are talking decades depending on the circumstances. There also may be an ability to buy a home on that program. There are a number of folks that find MM2H to be very beneficial. As we have discussed in prior videos, a lot of the financial requirements on that Visa did go up but one requirement that I was actually unaware of that Andrew brought up in his prior video is that it has a 90-day requirement, 90 days per calendar year of physical presence in Malaysia to maintain that status. So you are locked in if you will to Malaysia for a 90-day period every year and that sort of raised the question in my own head, well is this a requirement for example Thailand Elite visas which you could argue is somewhat similar to the MM2H program, albeit it is not really a one-to-one comparison, kind of an apples and oranges thing. Again there's a home ownership component to MM2H that does not at all exist with Thailand Elite. But one thing that can be said with regard to the Thailand Elite program, that 90-day residence requirement is not there. There's not that requirement to live in Thailand for 90 days out of every given calendar year. In fact in many ways unlike for example a standard Thai Retirement Visa, Thailand Elite does not have much of any residence requirement at all. I mean the sticker, the actual Elite Visa sticker, very similar to the multi-entry one year Business Visas we have talked about on this channel which are almost an anachronism at this point, I haven't seen one of these issued since pre-pandemic and I don't really foresee any of those being issued with any frequency anytime in the near future. But long story short, the Thailand Elite Visa is issued with a 5-year validity. Every time you enter Thailand on it, you get an automatic one year Visa stamp, one year lawful status at entry, you can come and go as much as you want on a Thailand Elite Visa, there is not any kind of physical presence requirement here in the Kingdom of Thailand.