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Anecdotal Information on Thai Retirement Visa Extensions

Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing Thai Retirement Visas yet again and some anecdotal evidence pertaining to Thai Retirement Visas as it has come up here recently in the past few days. 

There has been some speculation as to whether or not the transfer of Surachate "Big Joke" Hakpan away from being Immigration Chief will have an impact on overall Immigration policy moving forward especially with respect to certain aspects of the Retirement Visa scheme. I do not believe that to be the case as I have expressed in prior videos on this channel. I urge those who are watching this, go ahead and check those videos out. 

The thing to take away from this video is just further anecdotal evidence that I found on the internet; various sources. Most recently this source would be from Thai Visa Advice which is a Facebook group pertaining to Thai visas. I recently saw this posted: Notice "Today a friend went to Krabi Immigration to apply for another one-year extension of stay. Aged 50 or over, my friend had planned on using the 65k monthly income method. He had visited this office a week ago and presented his documentation asking “Is this good enough?” Tol "yes" and verifying documents were presented. Today was several days after the big change in the Thai Immigration HQ Chief and 3 days after a new Immigration Officer took control of Krabi Immigration. My friend entered the Immigration office planning to see the same Immigration Officer that he had in the preliminary discussion but was shuffled off to an Assistant Immigration Officer.  My friend presented his American passport and was immediately told that since his country will no longer issue an income affidavit/letter that his only way to qualify was to present evidence of having 800,000 baht in a Thai bank account and with full documentation verifying that the 800,000 Thai baht in the Thai bank came from a source from abroad. Also, the Immigration Officer indicated that the monthly income of 65,000 Baht application method would not be considered. My friend said he was not even allowed to show his 65,000 Baht monthly income bank deposit records."

So this is an interesting development. Two things were at play here. As noted this occurred in the aftermath of the transfer of the Senior Immigration Chief. Again, that is Surachate "Big Joke" Hakpan who was transferred out of Thai Immigration and there was some speculation as to whether or not there would be policy changes after that transfer. As I stated previously I didn't think that was going to be the case. I think that that is at least this information is a case is sort of evidence in corroboration of that assumption and I don't think that we are going to see many changes moving forward. That being stated the regulations do allow for the 65,000 per month to be shown in income so long as it can be proved up. Now I don't know the exact specifications and details of this particular individual and it is coming basically third hand or fourth hand, depending on how you look at it from the viewer at home if you will. That being stated, I think this is a pretty good indicator of how things are going to work moving forward. I think we are looking at a much stricter immigration apparatus. I do they probably did not correctly interpret the Immigration rules, if that individual did have 65,000 Baht coming into a Thai bank account which was clearly coming in from abroad, I think that was an oversight on the part of the Immigration Officer.  That being stated, it probably was relatively chaotic with not only a transfer at the top but also a transfer at the local office going on concurrently. So perhaps and unfortunately for the individual at hand that may have been an oversight on their part. 

That being stated, we will keep you updated as things progress with this and if I see anything further that specifically corroborates them not accepting income and are only accepting the lump sum in a bank account I will make a video as soon as I can in order to provide further insight with respect to that issue.