Transcript of the above video: 

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing bank balances for Retirement Visa extensions to be specific; I'm going to go ahead and throw this up on screen. This was sent to me by someone here in our office - one of my colleagues - who basically got this from the Immigration Office in Cha-am. This was stapled to Immigration documentation and it's the notation, we will use this for the thumbnail as well as just throw this up on screen. Quoting directly: "An alien must maintain a deposit totalling no less than 800,000 Baht for at least two months prior to the Application date and must retain this amount for three months after the extension is granted. After this period, the alien may withdraw funds, but the balance must not fall below 400,000 baht." 

So first of all understand, different provincial Immigration Offices do things slightly differently and have their own sort of prerogatives and discretionary kind of guidelines that they tend to adhere to. So Prachuab Khiri Khan Immigration I am presuming down near Cha-am I would imagine, would probably say "yeah this is how we are doing things" and maybe up here in Bangkok, it's not necessarily looking the same way. I just received this within hours of making this video so that is the reason I'm making it is it is something akin to an alert, but again it only applies at least from my understanding as of the timing of this video, to matters pertaining to that Provincial Immigration Office. And please, folks who get upset and things in the comments, please don't do that. There's not any reason to really get overly excited about this. This isn't unprecedented. This is a framework they have used before when calculating issues pertaining to bank balances and Thai Retirement Visas. We actually saw it first come up under the "Big Joke" era at Immigration. I have seen it sporadically kind of make an appearance, especially things we hear about anecdotally out in the provinces or when we actually do assist people with Immigration matters out in the provinces, sometimes we will see different frameworks coming up with respect to how different folks go ahead and assess issues associated with the finances pertaining to Thai Retirement Visa Extensions. 

That being said, and the thing to take away from this video is look it is a very salient data point that they are looking at this again in this manner, so I felt it was worthy of making a video. That being said, as per usual, we will be keeping you updated on this channel as the situation evolves.