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ResourcesVisa & Immigration LawThailand Immigration LawA New Thai "Special Tourist Visa" for Americans?

A New Thai "Special Tourist Visa" for Americans?

Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing the possibility of a "Special Tourist Visa" for Americans citizens.

In a recent announcement on the Royal Thai Embassy in Washington DC's website, the announcement is titled: Visa and Certificate of Entry procedures for Non-Thai Nationals Wishing to Enter Thailand for Tourism Purposes. Quoting directly: "Visa and Certificate of Entry procedures for non-Thai nationals wishing to enter Thailand for tourism purposes, the following qualifications are for applicants who wish to apply for a Tourist Visa, TR, single entry only". Now let's be clear, the Special Tourist Visa scheme has been discussed in the context of these long stay tourist visas. In the end you usually end up with 270 days or 9 months associated with what is being labeled the “Special Tourist Visa”. So clearly I don't think it is perhaps completely accurate to describe what is going on here as a “Special” Tourist Visa. Now that stated, it is a Tourist Visa so getting into the semantics of that may be a little bit unnecessary. 

Long story short at least from what we are seeing here, it says single entry only so presumably you are only talking about a 60-day Tourist Visa with the option to extend by another 30 days. This does not look to me at least as of the time of this video, to be the same thing as a Special Tourist Visa and these are more long stay granted. Those have been created here recently and presumably from everything I have read, they grant 9 months of status as opposed to a single entry which at most is going to get you 90 days. And a couple of other things is they have changed the criteria on this. Most notably they have added things like "Fit to Fly" documentation, Certificates of Entry. We have gotten into all that stuff in other videos. For those who are interested check out those videos. If you feel like you need some assistance in this whole thing as it is rather complicated, it is rather cumbersome, maybe contact us and maybe we can provide some assistance.

That stated, quoting further: "The following qualifications are for applicants who wish to apply for a Tourist Visa, TR, single entry only. Non-Thai nationals wishing to enter Thailand for tourism purposes", again tourism purposes, this is not a non-immigrant Visa this is not an O Visa, it is not a Business Visa, it is a Tourist Visa and remember we have reverted back to the rules status quo ante COVID response, and so converting out of a Tourist Visa may not be possible as a practical matter. Quoting directly: "Non-Thai nationals with banking account balance no less than $17,000 or 500,000 Baht each month," and they underline, that they emphasize that, "for the last 6 months", and they emphasize that again. So you are going to have to show Bank balances of a minimum of 500,000 Baht. We have discussed this in another video. They were talking about this. It looks like they have implemented it now, you are going to have to show at least 500,000 Baht in a bank account for at least 6 months in order to even be able to be considered eligible to apply for one of these new Thai Tourist Visas from the US. 

Now that stated we have yet to see this actually play out in practice so hopefully we will have further information to impart on this channel as the situation evolves.