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As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing Thai O Marriage Visas, well excuse me not Thai O Marriage Visas, excuse me, not Thai O Marriage Visas, just Thai O Visas for the parent of a Thai child. Now to preface this video, remember Thai O Marriage or Thai O Visas are discretionary in nature; they are kind of a catch-all category and they are kind of in a sense the miscellaneous visa category if you will. Thai Immigration oftentimes uses this category if they can't sort of for lack of a better term pigeon hole somebody into another one of the categories. Oftentimes we see Thai O Visas issued in the context of marriage hence the reason I sort of misspoke twice before regarding the Thai O Visa because oftentimes I am talking about the O Visa specifically in the context of marriage. 

Those who are unaware, might be aware of the fact that Thai Retirement Visas may be issued specifically under the O category as we have discussed in other videos but we are talking about the foreign parent of a Thai child. Yes it is possible to obtain a Thai O Visa under those circumstances but oftentimes it has been our experience, Thai Immigration really would prefer to issue another type of Visa rather than just an O based on parentage of a Thai. It's possible for them to do it; they will do it under many different circumstances and oftentimes where there is no alternative, they are pretty cooperative doing so but understand this is something that they are a little bit wary or leery of, I don't I don't know exactly why. There's part of me maybe thinks on a policy level that some of the Officers think it's if you can get married to a Thai National for example if the other parent of the Thai child is unmarried to the person who is applying for an O Visa they would prefer to see them married. Oftentimes in my opinion maybe Immigration maybe gets into people's personal life a little too much and this could be kind of one of those situations. That said, I kind of understand the policy thinking here. 

Long story short is at the end of the day any Immigration system sort of has its own routines, what it sort of does as a matter of course and the Thai O Visa is no different. I think a Thai O Visa for parentage of a Thai child is considered less routine and for that reason oftentimes at least in our experience we find, we have more difficulty assisting clients in obtaining a Thai O Visa under those circumstances.