Transcript of the above video: 

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing "free" Investment Visas for Thailand. I have seen this popping up a lot. It seems like this issue always comes up at the end of a high season as the folks that came out as tourists have started looking around and going, "hey, I really like it here; I want to stay'. And frankly, a lot of the real estate businesses and things, they want to do what they do. They want to sell real estate. 

In the past, we saw the Elite Visa being used as what I call a "gimmick" associated with basically buying something - buying a condo or whatever - but the point of this video is to understand, a lot of what I am hearing in terms of "long-stay" visas associated with buying or renting Thai property, or in the past, Elite Visas associated with buying, in that case, buying Thai property, these are not directly tied together. What you are talking about oftentimes is if you buy the property as sort of part of the fee if you will, whoever helps you buy it then goes and helps you get a visa. And in the past with Elite, they would just use some of the money that was part of the purchase price it looked to me like, to go ahead and go purchase you a membership in Elite and then sort of package it all together. As a sales tool, it makes total sense but what I'm talking about here, people need to understand, these two things are not if you will causally related. You're doing one thing when you are purchasing property and you are dealing with Immigration as well. It's sort of like how with Elite, you will hear about people who joined the program but then they have problems with Immigration. That's because it's two different things. There's the Thailand Privilege Program, there's the membership and the membership fees and there is being a member, and then there is owning a condo, excuse me, in this context I'm talking about, and then there is the Immigration benefits which if you have some sort of problem in your past with regard to your immigration history or something, Immigration can deny the visa and you can still be a member of Elite. 

In the past, they sort of packaged that together with possibly buying a condo. It looked to me like it was real estate agents were basically again taking a piece of their fees and going ahead and diverting it to Elite to pay for the membership fee and then they sort of packaged it all together to the buyer of the underlying property and that person ends up with a Visa and the condo, and they think they are sort of packaged together, they are sort of causally related, when in reality, they are not. That seems to be what is being discussed here with regard to so-called “long-stay” visas associated with property investment here in Thailand. So understand, it's not a "free" Visa per se, it's just sort of correlated to a possible purchase here in the Kingdom of Thailand.