Transcript of the above video: 

As the title of this video suggests, we are talking about discretion of Immigration Officers. I think it is worth noting, that is the crux of Immigration. At the end of the day, the adjudication by an Immigration Officer is where the rubber hits the road. 

There is a lot of talk right now about a lot of different Visa options including the extension of the Visa Exemption status stamp - so from 30 to 60 days. There is also a lot of talk about this new Destination Thailand Visa as well as the so-called Long-term Resident Visa. There has been a blitz of PR that has been done and there have been a lot of folks talking, especially out of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs although we have seen in the past, especially in the context of the Long-term Resident Visa, where the BOI will discuss a lot of things. And quite honestly, in both cases, Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the BOI are not tasked with Immigration enforcement where the rubber hits the road. It's going to be Thai Immigration Officers that deal with that. 

I thought of making this video after reading a recent article from the Pattaya Mail, that is pattayamail.com, the article is titled: Thailand's new Visa regulations still have ambiguous elements. Quoting directly: "A Deputy Director of the Thai Consular Affairs Department has now responded to the Bangkok Post readers' questions about the latest Immigration news." Yeah as we discussed, this person came out there from Ministry of Foreign Affairs and they made a bunch of like broad and sweeping pronouncements regarding Immigration, but as I pointed out and I think others did as well, they are not going to be ultimately the ones who make those determinations. It's going to be Immigration Officers who operate under the authority of the Ministry of Interior not Ministry Foreign Affairs. Quoting further: "Naruchai Ninnad commented principally on the new Destination Thailand Visa and doubling of the extension of Visa Exempt entries to 60 days. Basically the detailed implementation - where it is ambiguous - is left to the discretion of the Immigration Officer at ports of entry by air, land and sea." That's where the rubber is going to hit the road on this.

If I seem a little perturbed by the fact that everybody has gone around and they are talking on YouTube like they know what they are talking about, about how this new Visa system is going to work. As I have said a million times when we have seen developments like this in the past, it takes a minute to see how Immigration is going to deal with it because that's what's going to matter. It is not what somebody said in some press release, it's how it actually works in real time practically. And it is going to take probably six months to a year before we really get a feel for how new visas are going to actually work in practice. 

So the thing to take away from this video is yeah, the Destination Thailand Visa for example may be a great option for somebody or the Long-term Resident but other options are out there too. Standard Non-immigrant Visas, you may not need a visa at all. I was talking to somebody before making this video today, I was talking to a client on the phone and they were talking about Visa options and I finally determined that they weren't going to spend as much time in Thailand as would really require even a Visa. They could just use Exemption Stamps to maintain lawful status here in Thailand to get done what they needed doing. So long story short, again it's going to depend greatly on the underlying facts of a case and also it is imprudent to presume that we know exactly how new Visa processes will work, mere days after promulgation of regulations creating such visas.