Transcript of the above video: 

Those who are watching this video might be asking why do you have "Elite Visa" in quotation marks. Well, as you will recall going back about a year now, they changed the name of the "Elite Visa" over to "Thailand Privilege", so I don't think the name change really stuck as much as they thought it would. I don't even know why they changed it frankly so I put "Elite Visa” in quotation marks now. Meanwhile, yes the Thailand Elite Visa, the cost went up substantially about a year ago now and a lot of people jumped into that visa, and they basically said "well I'm going to get into it now because they are going to up the financial requirement". I have had some pretty angry messages from folks - mostly angry sort of at themselves or at the system - that they jumped into the Elite. I had talked to people at the time; I didn't try to talk people out of it. What we look to do, what I look to do when I talk to folks that are looking to come to Thailand is try to find them the most narrowly tailored option to their specific set of circumstances that is best crafted for them. It's one of the biggest problems I have with all of the YouTube nonsense in the ether of the internet where all of these armchair experts on all things Thai Immigration chime in constantly and it's because they use one size fits all absolutist answers. "Oh anyone can do this!" Well perhaps not. It's going to depend on circumstances. And again, just because there's a new thing out there, doesn't mean that the old stuff is less optimal. So again I feel like my job generally speaking is to find a narrowly tailored solution that provides basically the best set of circumstances for the most reasonable price for a given person looking to come and live in Thailand. 

That said, quoting directly from a recent article in the Pattaya Mail, that is pattayamail.com, the article is titled: The 60 days Visa Exempt and Destination Thailand Visa empower Immigration Officers. Quoting directly: "Expats with one year extensions of stay based on marriage or retirement or the Elite Visa are virtually ignored in the latest set of changes." Yeah that's true except when you consider, as I discussed, there were people that jumped into Elite presuming that they were sort of forestalling or sort of front running any later possible problems with Immigration. And it turns out that oh Immigration became more lax in a way in terms of the Destination Thailand Visa. I can see a lot of people in their 30s and 40s that might have gotten into the Elite Visa and are now kind of looking back saying "well I wish I maybe hadn't done that." Again it is circumstantially dependent; there's no point in saying "woulda, coulda, shoulda", but long story short the reason I bring it up is again, it's one of these things where taking one size fits all advice can have a downside and sometimes it operates in ways you don't think it will operate. Again presuming Immigration is going to get more strict as time goes on is not an unreasonable presumption but the folks that jumped into the “Elite Visa” when it was cheaper before the prices raised, some of them may not find themselves in the most optimal circumstances now because there has been a change to the rules. That said, yeah again quoting further: "It will probably be many months before the Visa Exempt and DTV ambiguities begin to clear up so expats are probably safer to stick with what they have." Generally speaking, if you are in solid Visa status don't start trying to move it around, just generally speaking. I know I am probably pushing the work away in a weird sense saying that, but unless there is some exigent need, for example you are in a non-work authorized visa and you need to get work authorization or something - unless there's a major exigent need - oftentimes I think sticking with what you have may be the most optimal sort of strategy if you will.