Transcript of the above video: 

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing long-stay visas, and we are also discussing this in the context of residency. It's important to point out the term "residence" or "residency" has been thrown around a lot lately - and by "lately" I mean the past year or two - in terms of the so-called Long-Term Resident Visa, the LTR Visa, now the notion of residency in connection with long-stay visa. 

There is something called Lawful Permanent Residence in Thailand. It's Permanent Residence; you reside in Thailand from that point forward. You are in a blue Tabian Baan. It is basically everything short of citizenship; you are a resident of Thailand. That is a different thing from a long-stay visa. That is the important thing to point out and it's the crux of this video. 

That said, I thought of making this video after reading a recent article from the Bangkok Post, bangkokpost.com, the article is titled: Phuket up in arms on long-stay visa. "Mr. Thanet said the required real estate investment of 3 million Baht is far too low compared with the benefits foreign buyers expect to receive, including the right to secure long-term residency." Yeah, and this is the point. Well in this video, well in this article, and I urge those who are watching this video go read it for yourselves, but the concern is that, it's the same concern that I made videos made contemporaneously with this one on this channel, concerns in Mexico regarding so-called nomads and things that it's going to drive up property prices and cause all kinds of disruption in the local markets. Reasonable people can disagree on that one; I'm not going to go any further into that analysis. 

The only thing I wanted to really pull out from this article for this video, the teaching point is these long-stay visas are a recurring one-year renewable Visa. They do not confer Residence. They do not confer a visa where it's just like "okay, you are a resident here, you no longer have to worry about visas." No, that is Lawful Permanent Residence; that is a different thing. 

So that is the thing to take away from this video. The question posed, "what's the difference?" Well the difference is to get into Resident status, you have to go through a prolonged process. I've done a number of videos in the past on that, I may they do another one quite soon regarding Residency, but yeah that is a different process from just getting a one-year renewable visa here in the Kingdom of Thailand.