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Update on Financial Requirements for Thai Retirement Visas

Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing Thai Retirement Visas yet again. It has been talked about a lot and I have gotten a lot of correspondence, in some cases not particularly positive correspondence from folks since doing some videos last week most notably videos regarding information posted on the Thai Consulate in Los Angeles' website as to changes with respect to financial requirements associated with the Thai O-A Retirement Visa.

Now as noted at the time, this appears to be in a state of flux. We are dealing with cases all over the world and different places as usual are doing things differently but I think over time it is probably prudent to presume, alliteration aside, that this is going to probably be phased in at least over time, I think. That is what I am thinking as of the time of this video. Now again, I have got a lot of negative feedback on those videos; people calling me saying I am trying to scaremonger people to drum up business. Well I am not trying to scaremonger folks at all. What I try to do with these videos is provide some insight and perhaps provide some forecasting of what may be coming. People kind of had the same reaction to me when I made videos about the possible end which ended up coming to fruition, the end of the Income Affidavit going back some years ago and even when we were discussing the possible creation of the requirements associated with insurance associated with Retirement Visas, I got a lot of negative feedback at the time. I am not particularly upset about it, it seems to be a type of blowback that comes up when you start talking about the future of Retirement Visas. To be clear again on the scaremongering thing, I am not trying to do that. I do understand especially folks who are retirees, this issue is near and dear to their heart. It is very concerning to them. That is not my purpose. I am just simply trying to provide insight.

Now to that end, since that video we have gotten a little bit more information. I am going to go ahead and post this. This is from the Royal Thai Consulate in Sydney, Australia. Some of our Australian viewers got some information to us. Yeah indeed, under the Non-Immigrant Visa type O-A and they say: 

Proof of adequate finance: quoting directly, this is under number 5 down here: "A bank statement in the past 6 months showing a deposit account with a minimum fund of Australian $ 54,545 or an income statement with a monthly salary of Australian $ 4,545 monthly; I think by salary they meant pension or just monthly amount. I went ahead and did the conversion on this just using Google and it looks like Australian $ 54,554 is 1,314,663.61 Thai Baht so it is actually a little higher than 1.2 million that we discussed last week. Then the Australian $ 4,545 is the equivalent at least as of the time I checked it through Google, 109,545.27 Baht, so again a little bit higher than the 100,000 we were talking about when we were discussing matters for the LA Consulate. 

Now meanwhile, someone went ahead and sent this through, I think this was a comment on our channel. Quoting directly: "I applied for an O-A Visa recently and showed a bank statement of 800,000. A request for additional information came back to me. I was told that I needed 1.2 million and a bank letter which I complied with. I added additional money to my account and provided the bank letter backing it up to the LA Consulate; I was denied." So again anecdotal, nonetheless I think it was insightful. 

Yeah we have been in contact with dealing with certain cases and it does look like this is coming online. Now again it might be phased in. Every case is different; every case process is going to be different. As we have noted in other videos at the time and we are noting in videos contemporaneously with this one, it looks like the O Retirement Visa may be in more demand moving forward. I am making another video as I said on that specifically but with respect to this O-A, let me be clear O-A Retirement Visa, these requirements, again it is not just the Thai Consulate in Los Angeles, it now appears to be on the Sydney website. I am going to get into this in other videos but there are people that are thinking because it is not on the Embassy website but is on the Consulate website, that means it can be automatically disregarded, that it is not really the way to look at this. Consulates and Embassies yes Consulates operate under the auspices of an Embassy but it is not like a military thing or something. The Embassy doesn't order the Consulate; they can in a sense but they operate somewhat autonomously, not fully. They have certain policies but they operate somewhat autonomously. Also I personally think the more I have been looking at this and I am not trying to muddy the waters any more than frankly they are and I do understand, I got a lot of negative feedback, "this is all just muddled, we don't understand!" Well quite frankly, yeah I don't get it either. It is being phased in it appears and exactly what is going on, we are still trying to ascertain.

My personal opinion this week based on what we have seen in the past week is that perhaps they are trying to create an adjudicatory spectrum whereby different cases can be adjudicated under different paradigms to provide discretion at the Embassy and Consular level to basically get a visa to fit a given individual's circumstances. Now on one level, I know there are those who would think that maybe that is not such a good thing. My personal opinion is I would like there to be more discretionary latitude where possible because I think in the end it results in essentially more people getting visas, long story short. So that said, again there is still a lot in play here, a lot in flux. We will certainly keep you updated on this channel as the situation evolves.