Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing so-called Golden Visas. These have also been described as the Long Term Residence Visa, a bit of a misnomer as we have discussed not really providing permanent residence in Thailand, just a really long 10-year Visa, sometimes also called LTR Visas.

I thought of making this video after reading a recent article from the Pattaya Mail, that is pattayamail.com, the article is titled: Pattaya's retirees and likely to apply for a Golden Visa. I am going to quote an excerpt out of here. I urge folks who are watching this video if you are really interested in this, read that article in detail. There is a lot of information in there. Quoting directly: "Others concurred," and in this article there are some interviews with various expats and things talking about this new LTR Visa. Quoting further: "Others concurred. "Why anyone would want to invest so much money in an LTR when there are much cheaper annual retirement options or even the Elite Visa, I just don't know," said Joachim Meyer. He pointed out that the LTR perks such as being exempt from the 90-day reporting or reentry permits weren't worth the entry requirements." 

Now as we have noted in other videos, I don't know where everybody is getting this, "there is no 90-day reporting or reentry permits on these so-called LTR Visas” because nobody has shown me in the Law specifically on 90-day reporting with respect to the Immigration Act of 1979 where there is the exemption because it says there is Permanent Residence which is PR,  that is its own process, and then there's Non-Immigrant Visas, there is everything else, and everything else that if you are not a Permanent Resident or a citizen, if you are on a Non-Immigrant Visa, you have got to do 90-day reporting. That is in the law, that is just in the statute so I don't know where they are getting this notion that that is being exempted. As to re-entry permits maybe that can be done; well if it's a multi entry Visa then the reentry permit is sort of built-in I guess you could say. Quoting further: "Not to mention the LTR registration charge of 50,000 Baht and the requirement have to annual (I think it's you have to have) but have to annual medical insurance of US$50,000 which are not required for most other visas." Yeah that's a big one; that's a sticking point we have seen with a lot of folks on the O-A Retirement Visa. I have seen a lot of people who have got issues with the O-A Retirement Visa. Meanwhile this LTR Visa has an insurance requirement associated with it. 

Now we have speculated in the past about whether or not the O Retirement Visa would have an insurance requirement. That does not seem to have come to pass. I don't foresee it happening anytime in the relatively near foreseeable future so I think everybody can kind of rest easy on that. But yeah these LTR Visas, a real sticking point especially with retirees seem to be the requirement for insurance. There are other visas that do not have this requirement as well, for example a standard Business Visa doesn't have an insurance requirement as does an LTR Visa. 

So again I am not making these videos necessarily to just run down the LTR Visa. I have kind of been asked that. “Do you like it, do you not like it?” I am ambivalent about it. I don't think in those terms, it's just I have seen in the past where these things get touted as sort of a major game changer, the end all be all, the great boon for expats, and yes it can be but oftentimes it is to a much narrower subset of folks than it initially appears to be. I am thinking that is probably going to be the way the LTR thing plays out. We saw this with Smart Visas. To a lesser extent we saw it with the 10-year retirement Visa. Yes there may be some people that really benefit from this but overall, it is probably going to be a fairly small subset of folks who are living here in Thailand.