Transcript of the above video: 

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing are Expats in some kind of an uproar over changes to Thailand's Visa scheme. I thought of making this video after reading a recent article from the Thaiger, that is thethaiger.com, the article is titled: Retiree's paradise or Visa maze? Thailand's options but no land grabs. Quoting directly: "In related news, long-stay expats are in uproar as Thailand's new Visa policies render their costly long-term options nearly worthless. The introduction of a 60-day Visa-exempt policy and the 180-day Destination Thailand Visa has left many feelings shortchanged."

You know, going back about a year ago people made fun of me. I was actually getting these like sarcastic emails I guess from ghosting people that are like my competition or something here in Thailand telling me that I was silly for not talking up the Thailand Elite System at the time because you could get in under the cheaper cost before they changed the price basically. And I was getting these emails, people were being very negative to me; I’m pretty used to that at this point frankly but that said, I thought it was very interesting because when I when I saw that stuff I kept thinking of this season in the movie Charlie Wilson's War where Gust Avrakotos tells him the story about a Zen master and a little boy. Basically the story goes like this. One day, there's a Zen master and a little boy. The little boy gets a horse for his birthday and everybody in the village says "oh how nice for the boy” and the Zen master says "oh we'll see." So the boy is out riding the horse and falls off the horse, he breaks his leg and the whole village says "oh how terrible for the boy" and the Zen master says "we'll see". Then a little bit later soldiers come around to the village to start shanghaiing people into the army, but they don't take the little boy because his leg is broken, and everybody says "well how nice for the boy" and the Zen Master says "we'll see", and it kind of goes on and on from there. 

The point I am trying to make it that was one of those "we'll see". kind of moments. Everybody went running into the Elite Visa at that time and some of them were sort of berating me for not saying you need to run in there and do that. The reason I was saying that is I kind of had an inkling that there were possibly new visa options in the burner, sort of in the hopper if you will on the horizon, so I wasn't going to run out hysterically and get people to run into something that later on they might regret. Now that said, this regret that is associated with this increased visa exception status here in Thailand from 30 to 60 days, as well as the Destination Thailand Visa, this may also be a "we'll see" moment as well, for a couple of reasons. Most notably, as I've noted in other videos, again there is a rule regarding how many Border Runs effectively are going to be allowed in Thailand using Visa exemption status; we talked about that years ago. They passed a Royal Decree on that, they promulgated I should say, a Royal Decree on that that said two a year. Now it's not a hard and fast rule but two a year, though two where you're not going to get hassled, past that, it's Immigration Officer discretion if they want to let somebody affectively live in Thailand utilizing Visa Exemption Stamps. 

Meanwhile, there's all this talk about the Destination Thailand Visa as if it's a foregone conclusion that things like extensions, things like Border Runs utilizing Thai Immigration are going to be just smooth and painless. The fact of the matter is Thai Immigration has not spoken yet as of the time of this video; they have not commented on the Destination Thailand Visa. Ministry of Foreign Affairs is running around and said a lot of things but Ministry of Foreign Affairs is not ultimately responsible with administering Immigration rules and laws within Thailand. They can issue visas abroad but the final decision on whether somebody is allowed to come in to Thailand or extend their status in Thailand comes down to Immigration. I think we're going to have one of these next "we'll see" moments sometime in quarter one of 2025 when we start to see all these people who went into the Destination Thailand Visa presuming it was all going to just work on a very streamlined manner. We're probably going to find that no it's probably not going to work exactly like that. There's going to be immigration oversight, and as people will find, Immigration can be, let's say challenging to deal with at the best of time. So again, what's the answer for what to think in all of this at this point? We'll see.