Transcript of the above video: 

As the title of this video suggests, we are asking the question, is the Central Bank setting immigration policy? I am not asking this to be provocative. I'm really asking the question genuinely and I'm asking it after I received an email from a viewer recently. Quoting directly: "FYI, just found out this week. One, Bangkok Bank just informed me that after they issue the letter to certify the deposit of 400k for the Marriage Visa" - so that's 400,00 baht that you need to put on hand in a bank account and have that balance sitting there in order to obtain or maintain O Marriage Visa status, so that's O Marriage Visa status as opposed to O Retirement Visa status which would require 800,000 Baht in a bank account. While we are talking about Marriage Visas just for a moment, if I could plug Pancake Palace.  My better half and I set up a restaurant here in downtown Bangkok and we do have breakfast anytime, as the name implies, but we also have American Diner style food: hamburgers, cheeseburgers, chilli bowls, buffalo wings. If you're interested come on down, link is in the description below. Let's get back to this.

Quoting further: So 400k for the Marriage Visa, so “the funds will be frozen for 4 months after the date of this letter. They showed me the instructions from the Central Bank. The Immigration Officer we saw was very surprised and unaware of this rule on deposits. She said Immigration has not issued such a rule to the processing officers" - because it would require a material change to the legal setup of visas to begin with. There would be some sort of due process of law, and again the Immigration Act of 1979, regulations can stem therefrom. I mean effectively both the O Marriage Visa and the O Retirement Visa are created by Ministerial Regulations, but there would be there be some level of due process and I expect that maybe on some level the thinking is "well we don't want the immigration officers to have to bear the brunt of some of this, but my question then is why is the Central Bank doing this? All of this.

I was just talking with a friend in fact shortly before making this video, all of this Central Banking policy is just totalitarian. They want CBDCs. You can't tell me that Digital Wallets and money that would track and trace you wouldn't be used to nudge you into doing things. Exactly like they are nudging people into having to hold their money for 4 months in a bank account and they are not able to even access it, that's a pretty big nudge. I mean and who, I never got the memo that the Central Banks get to sort of dictate like that. It seems off. It strikes an odd tone, let's put it that way. That said, quoting further: "Attached is a pic of the instructions issued to the banks from the Central Bank." We're going to go ahead and throw this up on screen. So folks, I'm not going to translate all this stuff, I think it's just, it's there. Quoting further: "So my question is can you verify that the Central Bank has this authority?" Well I'm asking the question too. "Was a policy issue by the Cabinet?" All good questions. I want to put up, maybe we'll make it the thumbnail where Junior Soprano in the TV series The Sopranos is talking to Tony Soprano and Tony Soprano is asking his advice about what to do and Junior just sort of says, "all good questions!" and he says, "Well what's the answer?" "Sometimes there isn't one." But at the same time, I just like the "all good questions". These are great questions, I don't know. Quoting further: "How come immigration is silent on this matter?" Well they're not silent. They're saying that they're not making this policy, it's the banks that are doing this. Quoting further: "What if any recourse for us farangs as the funds are essentially frozen for 6 months? Does this mean we are now forced to hire an agent to help to get the visa extended and pay them their fee, since 6 months on interest-free deposit or close to 0% is not worth the ROI as an investor?" Well I don't know if I would go that far, but quoting further: "The funds cannot be used for 6 months and have to be replaced by other funds, and once you transfer over 20k they might want to tax you. Thanks much." 

I'll leave it the person nameless but tip of the hat to this person. Again I do want to put this up on screen. Again, these are instructions. They seem to be coming from the Central Bank and most of our clients, once we get them set up and we continue to assist them in rolling over their visas, we usually pretty well have them set up in such a way that they don't really have to worry about dealing with some of this account freezing and stuff, and we have had to move people around. I'm not going to name names because there are other banks that do things differently. Some other banks do things the way that this person is saying Bangkok think is doing them. So, different banks do things differently. We've been assisting clients in finding the most optimal banking that we can to sort of facilitate their stay here in Thailand. But that said I don't think it's time for particular hyperbole. I do think the question is an honest one. Why is this being dictated to us by the Central Bank, is saying this now? And it's not Immigration asking for this. They are just doing it? I mean I would kind of like to have some clarification on that as well. That said, it remains to be seen, so we will certainly be keeping you updated on this channel as the situation evolves.