Transcript of the above video: 

As the title of this video suggests, we are asking the question if Thai Retirement Visa Policy is in fact discriminatory. So I thought of making this video - I'll go ahead and throw this on screen - this is from a comment put up on our channel from a prior video we did regarding Retirement Visas. 

Very quickly before I jump in here, folks have asked me, is there any way we can support you? We don't need to necessarily avail ourselves of a law firm at this time, we know you're not monetized, we appreciate what you do, is there anything we can do? Well if you do want to help, my better half and I set up a restaurant here in downtown Bangkok. The name is Pancake Palace, as the name applies it is breakfast any time. We also have English style breakfast, as well as American style breakfast and American style diner food: hamburgers, cheeseburgers, buffalo wings. We've got hot dogs, chilli dogs, we've got chicken wings, we've also got grilled cheese sandwiches. We have got tacos now, pork chops, we have got Coke in glass bottles. If you are interested, links are in the description below. Come on by and see us at Pancake Palace. 

That said, getting over to the comment, I'll put this up on screen. "They get more xenophobic and hypocritical every day. Yesterday I read that the average monthly income for a Thai is around 24,000 baht. Why do foreigners have to show an income of 65,000?" and in this instance this person means foreigners that are retired here. As we have discussed in other videos, there are two main methodologies of maintaining standard O Retirement Visa status here in Thailand; that's for retirees in the standard category. You either have to show 800,000 baht in an ongoing balance in a Thai Bank Account or a recurring 65,000 baht in pension income coming in monthly. I recently did a video talking about how yes, in theory there is a way to sort of mix those, but as a practical matter, you don't really want to do that; you want to use either one prong or the other. But the 65,000 cited here, that is what it is in reference to. That said, quoting further: "Cost of food/fuel/utilities the same for all races. Also, where I live, the average Thai has 2,000 in the bank, not the 800,000 I'm supposed to. Total discrimination." Well I hate to tell you this, but all Immigration protocols are discriminatory; that's the nature of Immigration protocols. 

Look, at the end of the day the Thais have set policy that if they are going to allow foreign nationals into their country to basically live here, doing nothing else other than just being here, that they have to meet certain criteria with regard to finances. And yeah, I get that maybe some people disagree with this, but one thing to bear in mind is these haven't changed since the '90s. In the late '90s the current 800,000 threshold, 65,000 monthly was set, and it hasn't gone up in 26 years. So that is an important thing to point out. Also, and I have talked about this in the past, one of the reasons I like the standard Retirement Visa is the thresholds associated with finances changed multiple times in the '90s; I made videos about that in the past. Each time they changed it, they grandfathered in the people who were already in the prior system into the prior terms. So again it's one of the reasons I like the standard Retirement Visa. 

That said, look I think yeah, to a certain extent I guess you could say that the policy is discriminatory if you are comparing foreigners to Thais, but that's the point of Immigration is Immigration apparatuses, Immigration mechanisms around the world, are supposed to be discriminatory toward outsiders and they are supposed to favour those from their own country.