Webinar: 6 Ways to Stay in Thailand for the Long-Term

Introduction

Thank you for your interest in our webinar. You may watch the recording or read the transcription below. You can download the slides here.

Mark Friedman:

Hi everybody. We’re going to get started here in just a couple of minutes and thank you for joining us tonight. Stay tuned please.

Hi everybody. We’re going to get started now. We’re going to take care of some preliminary business as we have some more guests join us. It’s been a great turnout. Appreciate everybody’s time on this Tuesday evening. And Will, if you could launch our slideshow, that would be great.

Hear that beeping? That’s more folks joining. So really pleased about everyone being able to spend your Tuesday evening with us. We’re going to go ahead and get started on some preliminary matters. So Will, if you could go to the next slide, that would be great.

Let’s go ahead. I want everybody to get dinner tonight. Before we begin, I think you jumped the slide. Let’s just go back one. No? Okay. Anyway, before we begin, we’re going to have a Q&A session at the end of our presentation tonight. You’ll see there’s a bar if you’re unfamiliar with Microsoft Teams, at the top. One says chat, one says Q&A. If you can send your questions through the Q&A button, that would be great. We’re going to try to get to everybody’s questions, but given the amount of material we’re covering and the limited timeframe, we probably won’t. But if we don’t, we’re going to go ahead and send you an email with an answer to your question. If we don’t get to it at the end of the presentation, don’t despair, we will get to it.

Also, don’t feel like you’ve got to take a lot of notes tonight. Relax and just listen to the presentation. We will be sharing a recording of this at a later day. Finally, there’ll be a bonus for participating at the end. It’ll be our little thank you for your joining us. Let’s go to the next slide please, Will.Thank you. 

Meet our presenters

I’m going to get the legal stuff out of the way. I have to do that. I’m a lawyer. I’m Mark Friedman. I’m the Managing Director and Founder of Baan Thai. I’m a graduate of the University of Southern California Gould School of Law back in the ’80s. Yes, we had law schools then. But I do not practice law here in the Kingdom and we are not providing legal advice tonight. We don’t understand or know your particular circumstances. We are providing general information for your benefit. I am joined however by two people who are incredible Thai lawyers who do provide legal advice in the Kingdom. So Chiara, why don’t you introduce yourself.

Chiara Budelli:

Hi, everybody. My name is Chiara Budelli. I graduated law school from Assumption University. I’m a Thai licensed attorney. I practice law mostly with corporate clients, so I take care of corporate matter and immigration matter for my expat clients.

Mark Friedman:

Okay, thank you. And View.

Supanitta “View” Withano:

Hi everybody, my name is Supanitta Withano. You can call me View. I’m graduate from Ramkhamhaeng University in law school, and I am Thai lawyer licensed and notary licensed. And I practice with immigration law in Thailand.

Mark Friedman:

Thank you very much. We’re going to do a quick survey here just so that we all get a better understanding of who’s joined our little community tonight. It’s a very simple survey. Will is going to call that up here in just a second. But we’d like to just get a sense of who here has been in Thailand, for how long or if you aspire to be here, we’re still letting people in, so please give us just a second here. We’ve got some folks showing up here a little bit late, but we want to just have everybody be able to participate. Thanks very much for your patience on that. Let’s go ahead and run the survey. It’s a quick survey. It’s very easy. You’ll be able to see the results here very quickly. But basically, we’re looking for how long you’ve been in the Kingdom. So whether you’re aspiring, you’re a newbie or a veteran here, if you’ll go ahead and click on the survey, that would be just great and we’ll share the results here in just a little while.

There you go. It’s interesting, we’ve got pretty much what I expected, a little bit of a bell curve around… Will, can you slide down just a little bit? There you go. Around the six to 10 year mark, one to five year mark. But we have a lot of folks who haven’t yet immigrated to Thailand. Welcome and hopefully, this will be very informative for you. We have a few folks that have been here 11 plus years, some real veterans. So a good representation, a good sampling of folks, and it just informs us that Thai immigration is something that we all continue to learn about as we progress through our life here in Thailand. Let’s go back to the slides. Thank you again for participating in that. The question we like to ask and answer for you is why be intentional about your stay options here in Thailand?

Why be intentional about your stay options?

The first thing I’d tell you is that… Let’s go on to the next slide Will. There we go. That the decisions you make today may have long-term implications for you going forward. We’re going to run through some scenarios here and we’re going to compare some various visa options that’ll make that apparent. But there can be unintended consequences if you’re not aware of the full playing field. The second thing is that having long-term intentions may affect your stability here. Most of us, other than those who have truly immigrated to the Kingdom, are here based upon circumstances. And those circumstances can be economic, they can be family, they can be a combination of that. But most of us are here on non-immigrant status and that means that if our circumstances change, our stability and our ability to remain here changes. Finally, I think having a long-term plan just gives you peace of mind.

Your aspirations inform your choice

I had a former boss who loved that old adage, failing to plan is planning to fail. I just find that when I have a long-term plan in place, I just feel a lots better about my prospects. So how do you put a long-term plan in place and we believe, View and Chiara and I, that it’s all about you and your aspirations. And that really starts with a basic question. How long do you want to be here? If it’s for a couple of years and then you’re going to move on to Bali to go surfing or Portugal to go sip wine, probably something easy-peasy and expensive will work. But if you’re planning on making Thailand your long-term home, then a deeper investment and a deeper dive into your options will probably be worthwhile.

It’ll also depend on why you’re here. Are you here to plant an economic flag in the Kingdom, either by working or investing in starting a business here? You may have your heart here in Thailand, meaning that your loved ones are here and that could be a spouse or children or both. And finally, it can be something as mundane as you’re wanting to avoid ministerial hassles and just please give me the easiest path to a long term stay here in Thailand. Chiara, View and I love forms, legal forms. That’s where we live, that’s what we like to do. I, around numbers, break into a cold sweat, so I have accountants both here in Thailand and in the United States because filling out a tax form is about as terrifying for me as building IKEA furniture. It really is an individual decision and it really will depend on your circumstances.

But we believe it comes down to a fundamental question. Is Thailand your home or is it home for a while? And if it’s the latter, that’ll inform you as to your visa options. But if it’s the former, we strongly recommend that you put a long-term strategy in place to truly immigrate to the Kingdom.

Why are long stays challenging?

We hear a lot from clients and I’m on the Facebook expats group and on the visa group. We hear a lot of frustration, a lot of concern. In immigration law, you’re dealing with your aspirations, whether that’s to be economically viable in Thailand or to be with your loved ones. But there is an emotional attachment to the outcome which is not like other areas of the law and that can produce some anxiety.

Difficulty is a two-way street

So how do we contextualize this so we can reduce that anxiety a bit? We find, and I’ve got another team here that helps Thai nationals immigrate and visit countries around the globe, that the difficulty really isn’t just tied to Thailand and it really is a two-way street.

Just looking at Americans, and it varies, I appreciate with people coming from the EU and Great Britain and Australia, but with Americans coming to Thailand, and to visit here, it’s unbelievably easy. You step off the airplane, you have your 30 days, it’s now 30 days by the way, the 45-day period is over, and then you can renew for another 30 days with 1900 Baht in the immigration office, easy-peasy. However, to immigrate to Thailand, even if you are married to a Thai national, you have to earn your way into this country and it takes years, it takes economic contribution, it takes a dedication to learn the language. Chiara is going to go into some of those details when she talks about PR. So it’s much more difficult to immigrate to Thailand.

If you flip that coin and you think about Thais wanting to go to the United States, it’s just about impossible for Thais to obtain a B1/B2 tourist visa. There’s a presumption that Thais are going to go to America in order to violate the terms of their visa, and so those visas are rarely granted. However, for a Thai person marrying a US citizen, there is a certain path to permanent residency once you go through the CR1 process and certainly a path to citizenship, which is something that my wife’s successfully accomplished many years ago.

So it’s just a different way to look at immigration and I think that’s by dented history and culture and how people view their borders.

Success = Understand. Accept. Implement.

How do you be successful in making Thailand your long-term home, whether that’s just a couple of years or forever? We think it’s very important, first of all, to understand the complete playing field. It’s not just the black letter law, which we’re going to go into a minute, but it’s also understanding the fact that officers in immigration, officers at the Department of Labor and supervisors at the BOI are afforded a great deal of discretion in the way in which they implement and make decisions about your applications.

That’s why Chiara and View spend a lot of time with those officers and with those supervisors to understand their perspective and how they go about actually implementing. Once you understand, then it’s acceptance, kind of a Buddhist concept, I know, but I think it’s much better after you understand the playing field, that you just play the hand you’re dealt, kind of a gambling term. But we find that clients are much more successful when they accept what’s happening. And finally, implementing and not waiting. And we’re going to go into some scenarios where we’ve had clients that have waited to implement and have faced some challenges as a result of that.

What are your long stay options?

Let’s get into the meat of the presentation, which are your long-term stay options. For those of you who are eagle eyed, I told you I hated numbers. Our first slide said six ways to stay long-term in the Kingdom, you’ll add five plus two and there’s actually seven because at the end of the day, I added Elite visas and didn’t change the title slide. So that just goes to show you how badly I really don’t like numbers. But in any event, your world when you come to Thailand are divided into two essential categories. One is non-immigrant status, which most people here in Thailand are on. There are two circumstances around that, or two commonalities around all non-immigrant visas. They’re based on circumstances, whether it’s a job or a business or a family relation, and they are time limited. All of the non-immigrant visas are time limited.

And then there are two immigrant statuses and these are not visas. This is truly a status for which you submit a complex application and you go through approvals for a number of government agencies. It is a status now in the Kingdom, not a visa and it is forever, it is not time limited.

Which options lead to PR/Citizenship?

Let me go through three scenarios about why we think that long-term planning and long-term strategy will make a difference to your success here in Thailand. And let’s take for example the pathways to permanent residency and citizenship. If you answered the question that we asked before, is Thailand home or home for a while, and you said it’s home, then you probably want to take a serious look at permanent residency and citizenship.

There are two and only two visas that can get you there. One is the Non-O marriage visa and the other is the Non-B or business visa. That’s it. With the long-term resident visa, yes you can work, yes you can earn sufficient amounts of money to qualify for PR, 80,000 to 100,000 Thai Baht a month, roughly speaking, there’s some nuances around that. But as it currently stands, the long-term resident visa does not provide a pathway to citizenship. I’m sorry, to permanent residency. In order to get to permanent residency, you need to extend the same exact category of visa for three consecutive years.

But no one has asked and no one’s really answered the question yet. What if I’m on a LTR visa for three consecutive years? Is that going to be sufficient? Now the visa was only rolled out in September of last year, so nobody’s had the opportunity to ask that question and we think that question will get answered at some point. But as it stands right now, there are two pathways to permanent residency. So if you’re considering an LTR visa and you’re currently on a Non-B or a Non-O marriage and you want to get PR, I would slow that decision making down until that question is answered.

Retirement Visa vs Long-Term Resident Visa

Let’s look at another strategic consideration. You’re over the age of 50 and you’re thinking about retiring to Thailand. If you qualify for a long-term resident visa, and typically that means $80,000 of passive income or you’re willing to make a substantial investment here, again, there are nuances and there are other qualifications, but just a rough cut, $500,000 in a condo or government bonds and you’re deciding between these two visa options, the first question is how long do I want to stay? And if it’s only a couple of years and you’re going to move on, probably a Non-O retirement visa will be sufficient because the paperwork and the complexity and the approval process for an LTR visa is much greater.

However, if you’re going to be here for a substantial period of time, how much is your time important to you? Unlike the Non-O retirement visa, which has to be extended annually and you have to report every 90 days your residence, the LTR visa is basically, you talk to the BOI once every five years and you’re done. Your residence reporting is once a year, instead of 90 days, and you have a much faster track through the airport. If time is important to you and you’re going to be here for a long period of time, the LTR visa may make more sense. Also, are you bringing a family here? Under the Non-O retirement visa you can bring a spouse, one dependent, but under the LTR visa, you can bring up to four dependents.

And finally, if you want to work and technically in Thailand, whether you’re working in Thailand and making revenue here or working from Thailand and making revenue outside of Thailand, you need a work permit, the LTR visa provides you an opportunity to get a digital work permit. The Non-O visa doesn’t permit you to work.

Marriage Visa vs Non-B Visa

And then finally, let’s take one last scenario and then I’m going to turn this over to the brain trust and they’re going to go into the individual visas. But if you’re working in Thailand and married to a Thai national, what’s better, a marriage visa, a Non-O marriage visa, or a Non-B visa? And the answer is, it depends.

If you and your spouse want to work together and put the Non-O marriage visa package together and put out your marriage certificate, pictures of your home, a map to your home and all of that, that may be a better option. If you show up to work and every year your HR department or the company’s visa agent or lawyers just tell you when to go down to immigration or go down to the department of labor for your new stamps, that may be the easier option. But like everything else, there’s additional complexity here. For example, if you have a business and you are concerned or thinking about the ratio of Thai workers to foreign workers, under a non-B visa, to get that annual extension for each work permit, you need four Thai nationals working on staff. And if you have a Non-O marriage visa, you need two Thai nationals for every work permit.

If you have, for example, a hospitality business and you’ve employed lots and lots of Thai staff, that may not be meaningful to you. But if you’re a startup company or have a much smaller staff, the Non-O marriage visa may make more sense for you. That’s just three examples of what we like to do with our clients, which is strategize and think through the various implications of your visa choices.

Retirement Visa

So one, I’m going to go ahead and turn this over, I believe, to View to talk about the first visa category, the retirement visa.

Supanitta “View” Withano:

So we can start at list number one about retirement visa. But this visa is easy to get in full and benefit is least paperwork. Immigration will require just bank document or in case your embassy can issue a pension document. But you can do pension document certified by embassy as well. But mostly embassy in Thailand they stopped to issue pension documents, so now it’s mostly our client will use Thai bank account. Net benefit it’s easy to get approved, if your document qualify for visa we will stamp them immediately in the same day.

But this visa has challenge, in that you need to check 800,000 Baht in your Thai bank account and then you need to show this money two month in advance before you submit or when next year you need to show this money in two months in advance before your extension. And this visa cannot have work permit and no part to submit type here and still need 90-day report. And you still need to do reentry. In Thailand we have single and multiple entries, but if you’re found out without reentry, your visa will be canceled.

Who Should Apply?

Who should apply for this visa? You have to be at least 50 years old and easy long-stay and not interest about immigrating to be like PR and Thai citizen.

Marriage Visa

Number two about marriage visa. This one include Thai spouse and Thai children as well. Benefit is easy to approve and able to have work in Thailand and can have work permits. But the challenge is same as retirement, both require finance document, 400,000 in Thai bank account at least two months in advance before you submit and two months in advance before your extension visa. And this type of visa, still needs reentry permit and still need 90-day report and yearly extensions. But if you have a Thai spouse like Thai husband, for financial document we will not require.

Mark Friedman:

Also, if you have a Thai husband?

Supanitta “View” Withano:

Yeah, Thai husband.

Mark Friedman:

It’s easier to get Thai citizenship as well.

Who Should Apply?

Supanitta “View” Withano:

Yes. Who should apply for this visa? You’re married with a Thai national and have to be in the marriage register and interested in working in Thailand and want to be immigrant like Thai PR and Thai citizenship.

Long-Term Resident Visa (LTR)

Mark Friedman:

So Chiara, are you going to talk about LTR?

Chiara Budelli:

Yes. So the next subject we’re going to talk about is the LTR, the Long-Term Resident visa. This is a very new visa program that just came out September of last year, I think. The details online might be a little foggy on this. We’ll go a little bit into details so you know what are the benefits of this type of visa. The first benefit is that it’s a long term visa. You get an initial of five years plus another five years. People that want to stay in Thailand for long term would be able to use this visa to avoid the hassle of going to the immigration each year for the extension. The 90-days report becomes a yearly report so you don’t have to show up there every 90 days as well.

This visa also has the reentry permit, like my colleague mentioned, included in their visa. The challenges though are that it might require a larger financial investment into the country due to their qualification, are higher than other type of non-immigrant visa. And as of right now, since the visa program is very new, there’s still some information that are not clear enough yet. We would have to follow up on the application quite a bit and help the officers go through the application pretty much. And as of now, we still don’t have a clear path to PR or citizenship with this type of visa.

Mark Friedman:

And Chiara, would you say that if somebody had for example $80,000 equivalent in just a pension or in rental income, that that’s a much easier path?

Chiara Budelli:

Oh yeah. So the LTR does have four category that you can apply under. The one that Mark mentioned is the multi-pensioner category, which two requirement are, first, you have to be at least 50 years of age. The other one is having $80,000 a year of passive income. Those are the only documents that they will request in order to apply for this category of the LTR visa.

Mark Friedman:

I think we found that especially with the line officers, not necessarily the supervisors, that they’re not used to seeing people’s investment portfolios.

Chiara Budelli:

Yeah.

Mark Friedman:

So it’s been a challenge.

Chiara Budelli:

We can help them navigate the process a little bit because every country have different type of portfolio and different type of bank statements. It’s complicated in that sense. But if you do have that type of passive income, I do suggest going through this type of visa because it will bypass all the immigration has, so that you would have to go with the regular non-immigrant visa.

Who should apply for this visa?

The actual name of the program is for wealthy people, a people that have accumulated wealth and wants to spend long-term in Thailand, want to stay more than a couple of years. And you want the hassle-free process and you don’t have to go down to immigration as often because for the LTR visa, the other good thing is everything can be done via the single window system, which doesn’t require you to go down to main immigration, which is a very big hassle as well.

Elite Visa

Next one is the Elite visa. The elite visa is a program by the Thai Privilege Card which allow you to stay in Thailand for long term from five up to 20 years. The downside of this is that this is pretty much a long-term tourist visa. You can stay here long-term but you cannot get a work permit, you will not be allowed to work here. The good thing is you can bring in your family, your dependent according to the packages that you pay for. The other downside is the prices for this visa is quite steep. For other type of non-immigrant visa, the money that you have to keep in the bank account will still be yours. But this one, when you pay that amount, it’s the actual government fee that you’re not going to get back after your visa has expired. But it’s still a good option for people that don’t want any hassle, just want to come in here and stay and relax on the beach. I do think that this is good options for you as well.

Who should apply for this?

It’s people that want to relax in Thailand, want royalty treatment a little bit and wants to avoid any other kind of hassle that you have to go through with immigration. You just pay a fee, you’ve applied through the elite visa program and you get your long-term tourist visa.

Mark Friedman:

And this is actually stamped by the Bureau of Immigration?

Chiara Budelli:

Yes, correct. It is a real visa. It’s stamped by the Bureau of Immigration, but it’s just a different type of visa that is in coordination with the Thai elite program.

Permanent Residency (PR)

Next one we’re going to talk about is the Permanent Residency or Thai PR. I know that a lot of people are interested in this one. The Thai PR is one of the few ways that you can actually immigrate to Thailand. You can become an actual, well not as much as a citizen would be, but as much as you can get with the immigrant status. The PR helps you stay in Thailand without having to worry about your circumstances. You can decide one day that you want to stop working, you can do that or if your circumstances with your family life changes, you still have your PR status and it will not be void by any reason except if you forget your reentry permit.

Mark Friedman:

Which is crazy.

Chiara Budelli:

Yes. PR still need reentry permit, but if you have your reentry permit on your passport, then your PR is good. The path is a little bit more complicated. It’s quite a long-term plan because you do have requirements of having the same type of immigrant visa, no sorry, non-immigrant visa for at least three consecutive years, you have a minimum salary that you have to meet. You have to have-

Mark Friedman:

Let’s slow down just for a moment. But that’s about 80,000-

Chiara Budelli:

80-100 yes. 80-100.

Mark Friedman:

And on that you’re paying taxes?

Chiara Budelli:

Exactly.

Mark Friedman:

And that’s three years as well?

Chiara Budelli:

That’s three years, and it has to be continuously, meaning that you cannot have any breaks. I have had clients that had the COVID visa for a while and then went back to the Non-B visa. That would cause you to have to start and count from one from the first year all over again. This is why we’re doing this for the long-term plan, so you know that if PR is your goal then you have to keep your non-immigrant status as close as possible.

Mark Friedman:

And not switch visa?

Chiara Budelli:

And not switch visa. Yes. Even though they’re both non-immigrant visa. For example, the Non-B and the Non-O marriage visa, if you switch between them, you have to start over from one all over again. For this option, the price is a little bit steeper, but you get a permanent residency status and you can stay here as long as you want with any reason you want.

Mark Friedman:

And Chiara those prices, what we’re just quoting, is the government fee?

Chiara Budelli:

The government fee. Yes. So the reason why the price range is a little bit different is only because for each category, they do have different prices for the government fee. So if you’re applying under your Non-B visa with the economic contribution category, the price for the actual government fee would be higher, so around 199,000 Thai Baht. But if you apply under the Thai family category, then the application fee will be lower on about 100,000 Thai Baht.

Mark Friedman:

And there may be one other way you can lose your PR status, and this happened during COVID if you’re out of the country for more than a year?

Chiara Budelli:

Yes. So you would have to come into Thailand at least once a year. It doesn’t state how long you have to stay here, but your feet have to touch the ground in Thailand at least once a year to keep your PR.

Mark Friedman:

And then once you have your PR, after you are approved, do you get a house book? What other benefits come?

Chiara Budelli:

Yes, you do get a house book and you can also get the Thai alien card, we call it the pink card, would be your identification card for a foreigner that lives in Thailand.

Mark Friedman:

And can you talk just for a moment about the language requirement, what’s your perspective and then how that interview works?

Chiara Budelli:

Okay, so the Thai language language interview might be something that people are a little bit worried about. I want to put your mind at ease that you don’t have to be fluent in Thai in order to pass your Thai language interview. The level that I would consider is an intermediate level conversationalist. So more than passing Thai but not as fluent Thai. You just have to be able to understand officer’s questions and answer about yourself, about your work and your family, pretty much information about yourself.

Mark Friedman:

And when does that interview take place and how many people are in the room with you?

Chiara Budelli:

Usually around April. The window for PR application, it’s from October to December after you submit your application and the year after around April or May, you will be scheduling for an interview. You will have to go into the interview room alone and there will be about 10 to 15 people actually from different government sectors sitting there listening to you. And one of the offices will be the one asking you the questions. It might be a little bit intimidating, but at this stage they’re not trying to turn anybody down, they just want to verify that you actually have some knowledge in the Thai language.

Mark Friedman:

And are there any resources to help people who want to get a sense of the questions?

Chiara Budelli:

Yes, we do have flash cards. We do have flash cards that we can provide and we do have an app that teach you, well it doesn’t really teach you the Thai language, but it helps you with the question that might be on your PR interview. And we do have also a file version of that that we can share with you guys.

Mark Friedman:

So that’s all on our resources section of our website. Feel free to download.

Chiara Budelli:

You can download everything. We also have the actual physical flashcards for you if that’s easier and you can request that from us as well.

Mark Friedman:

Great, thank you.

Who should apply?

Chiara Budelli:

Okay, well I think I already said who should apply. If you find that Thailand is your home and you want to stay here for a long term without any hassle, being as close to a Thai citizen as possible, PR is your path.

Mark Friedman:

And I would say that the only two things would be purchases of land and voting in elections?

Chiara Budelli:

Yes, exactly. So if you’re not interested in voting or in political involvement or you don’t want to own land in Thailand, then I think PR would be the best option for you in this situation. Okay, I’m going to turn this over back to my colleague and she’s going to talk about the Thai citizenship.

Thai Citizenship

Supanitta “View” Withano:

About Thai citizenship. Benefit is after you get approval for this one, you can own land, and own a Thai company and be considered for a Thai national for work. It will be good because no immigration duty anymore. But 90-day report, reentry permit and extension visa even for work permit.

Mark Friedman:

So even on PR you have to apply for a work permit. Yes. But once you’re a citizen, you’re considered a Thai national and the department of labor no longer is looking to protect the Thai labor force because you’re part of the Thai labor force.

Supanitta “View” Withano:

But for this one, more challenging with another option because for paperwork is similar to Thai PR. It’s a lot of paperwork and you have to pay tax in Thailand and if you don’t have Thai spouse, you must hold PR for at least five years and then you can submit Thai citizenship.

Mark Friedman:

And then how long can it take to get approved for citizenship?

Supanitta “View” Withano:

At least two or three years. Because you’re approved by many government office. But this is more difficult about [inaudible 00:39:52] and you need to know about Thai history and need to sing about national anthem and royal family as well. But Thai [inaudible 00:40:08] have to be native.

Mark Friedman:

So completely fluent in Thai. Knowledgeable about civics history. The royal family. Be able to sing the national anthem. And is there also a royal attribute to the royal family that you have to sing as well?

Supanitta “View” Withano:

Yes.

Mark Friedman:

Okay. Well that would knock me out, I can’t sing.

Supanitta “View” Withano:

But when you submit, you might have to share with your embassy because some national they will allow to have that one [inaudible 00:40:45]

Mark Friedman:

That’s a very good point. And there’s also for Australians, if you get permanent residency here or citizenship, there may be implications for your pension benefits from the government. So again, understanding all of the ramifications for your legal choices. You should get to know those before you start down a particular path. By the way, let’s go back just really quickly, that 10,000 Baht seems very low. I would think, View, as a practical matter, other fees and maybe even charitable donations would increase the investment to get to citizenship. What would you estimate between the two of you you think would be the final cost? Anywhere from?

Chiara Budelli:

A couple of hundred thousand bucks.

Mark Friedman:

And up?

Chiara Budelli:

And up. Yes.

Mark Friedman:

Okay. All right. I just wanted to give people a realistic notion we are only quoting-

Chiara Budelli:

The 10,000 is only the filing fee and there might be other expenses that you might encounter on your way to get your citizenship.

Mark Friedman:

And I think the same is true for PR?

Chiara Budelli:

Exactly, yes.

Mark Friedman:

But if you’re thinking about immigrating or you have a Thai spouse or a loved one that’s thinking about immigrating to the US or the Great Britain or Australia, there are significant fees because you’re basically asking to be member of the club and that takes a lot of due diligence on the part of the government.

Chiara Budelli:

Yes, that is correct.

Who should apply?

Supanitta “View” Withano:

 So if you are fully committed to Thailand as your home and want to be treated as if you were born here, you should apply for Thai citizenship.

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Mark Friedman:

Thank you very much. So we’ve got a few more things to cover, but for those of you who have stuck with us this long, we will make available to you, our guide and all of this material will be presented. In addition to which, if we could go to the next slide, Will that would be great, we try to put out a lot of information so that people can, who are so inclined, can do a lot of these themselves. And I would especially encourage people for the Non-O visas, the retirement visas and the marriage visas. If you get the checklist… And for example in my province where my wife and I have a home in Phetchabun, the immigration office actually has a roadmap and a pathway up on the wall that you can take a picture of to help you put together your visa package.

Once you do it once, you’ve got it. It’s not that complicated to do. However, we’ve had busy executives and so on who have even insisted that we help them out with their Thailand pass when that was the thing. My daughter did it in five minutes and I tried to convince this executive he could do it himself and he just didn’t have the time, so employed us to do that.

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If you find that you’re interested in PR, if you want to have a consultation, that’s great. If you find that engaging our service is a value-add, for participating today, we’ll take something off our professional fees and you’ll have the benefit of working with these very, very great Thai lawyers who can tell you firsthand what it is the officers will be looking for when your application is submitted.

Long-range planning will make your life easier.

Let’s just talk generally and then we’re going to get into some questions. I think we’ve got several from you all and we want to have a chance to answer those. We believe that long-range strategic planning will make your life easier, period, full-stop. Leaving things to chance, especially when circumstances are the reason you’re here in Thailand, can only lead to unexpected consequences. And I think the last three years of a pandemic and the economic consequences of that have gone a long way in showing you that perhaps the land will keep moving here and it’s best to put a plan, a rock solid plan in place.

Don’t Wait

The other thing we counsel is please don’t wait. We’ve had two circumstances that I want to relate to you, one is heartbreaking, the other one is just not ideal. But we’ve had a number of children who are now adult children who were born to Thai nationals that want to connect with Thailand and make Thailand their home. But unfortunately their parent has passed away, records get lost. The Thai ID number, which is so important as a Thai national, as my lawyers will tell you, is lost. And then maybe an aunt and uncle somewhere in a province might have some of that information, but it really becomes problematic. If you know somebody in that circumstance, don’t have them wait.

Also, we had a woman who was married to a Thai national and as I said before, the path for a woman to citizenship is quite straightforward and the economic strictures are much, much lower. And unfortunately she waited until her husband passed away and it made it impossible for us to help her out in that regard. The other circumstance we see are busy executives and we know that if you’re trying to build a business here in Thailand or you’re working for a multinational company, it’s really hard. It’s like death and taxes.

Do you really want to talk about your estate plan? Do you really want to talk about your taxes all that much? Immigration falls into that bucket. We’re approached by a number of executives who are within a stone’s throw of retirement and they’re about to give up their Non-B visa in a couple of months because they are retiring and now they have the time to think about PR. But the problem is once they give up their Non-B visa, they break that three year cycle of extending their visa and then they make themselves ineligible for PR leaving us to scramble. We just find that as you make a deeper and deeper commitment to Thailand, a deeper investment in your friends, your family, your economics here, that if you implement a good plan, you won’t uproot your life, you won’t find yourself scrambling to find yet another circumstance and a way to stay here. You don’t unintentionally impact your PR eligibility.

I’ll give you one more example of that. We had a client whose company was changing from a BOI status company to a non-BOI status company, which meant that both their work permit and their visa statuses were going to change. There’s a way to do that in a single day that preserves the continuation of the visa and work permit status. But if it doesn’t happen perfectly in that one day, you can break that visa and work permit and have to start over again on your third year journey to permit residency. So again, getting these things done sooner rather than later helps. The other thing, I’ll state to you if you are considering PR, once you apply for PR and I believe Chiara, once you apply for citizenship, then you’re grandfathered or grandmothered in.

Chiara Budelli:

Yes, that is correct.

Mark Friedman:

Even if you lost your job or your family status changed, you would still be under a special status with immigration during the pendency of those applications so that you could stay in the Kingdom, sometimes for a year and if it’s in the case of some PR applications or citizen applications, several years under that status. There was an old rabbi who asked, “If not now, when?” In terms of getting on with life, we would provide that same piece of advice as you think about implementing your strategy here, your long-term stay strategy here in the Kingdom. We appreciate it’s late on a Tuesday night, people are getting hungry. There’s been a number of questions. Thank you for those submitted to us and let’s get on with those and start to answer some of them. So Chiara, who’s our first question?

Q & A

Chiara Budelli:

Okay, we have a question from Ron. He said that we mentioned length of stay, it means you must go or is it renewable for that period? For all non-immigrant visas, they are renewable. The length of stay is the length. You can stay on that visa for the length of that visa, but you can extend that each year. The non-immigrant is a yearly visa. Each year before your visa expires you can extend it for an additional year.

Mark Friedman:

So let’s add a little more color to that. How far in advance will immigration accept a visa extension? We could talk about Non-O marriage or Non-O retirement.

Chiara Budelli:

Yes, for an non-immigrant, they accept that the extension for the maximum 45 days before your visa expires.

Mark Friedman:

And do you think it’s a good idea to extend earlier rather than at the last minute and why?

Chiara Budelli:

Yes, definitely because if there’s any issue or any small problem with your documentation, you would have time to fix that before your visa expires. I would not wait until last minute to do the extension.

Mark Friedman:

What’s your best advice? Give the folks like-

Chiara Budelli:

I usually extend the visa for my clients one month in advance before the visa expires.

Mark Friedman:

Great. And upon extension we would also advise getting your reentry permit at that time?

Chiara Budelli:

Yes. So the reentry permit can be purchased directly at immigration on the date that you get your visa extension or you can buy that at the airport before you leave the country as well. Just remember to always have that on your passport if you don’t want to lose your visa status.

Mark Friedman:

And full disclosure, whose boss forgot his reentry permit once and initiated his visa? You can name names.

Chiara Budelli:

That’s my boss, Mark. He actually did forget his reentry visa one time and he had to restart all over again.

Mark Friedman:

It happens to the best ones.

Chiara Budelli:

It can happen to anybody. That is why I usually just tell my clients to get it at the date they get the extension so they don’t forget about it. We do have a couple of more questions that we can go through. I think Ron asked, “Can you drive with an old visa?” Yes, of course you can, but you would have to do your driver’s license first. So with any type of non-immigrant visa you can go to the motor, the DMV would be the American one, the motor vehicle department and get your driver’s license with your non-immigrant visa.

Mark Friedman:

As someone who got his driver’s license here, I came in with an international driver’s license. In America, if you get it through AAA, I’m sure there’s the equivalent in the Great Britain, the EU, in Australia and so on. With that and with my Tabien Bahn, which is my house book, the yellow house book, I found getting a driver’s license incredibly easy. I had to watch a one-hour video, I had to take some coordination test, which fortunately I passed, but it’s not difficult to do. I would say that given the random stops on some of the highways, it’s a great idea to make sure that you do get your Thai driving license before your international driving license expires.

Chiara Budelli:

We do have one more. Can someone on visa exempt status open a bank account in Thailand in order to make advanced preparation to deposit the 800,000 Baht required for the retirement visa? So there are two scenario to this. The first one you request your Non-O visa, your retirement visa from abroad. In that scenario you can show your bank statement from your home country and get the initial three months from the Thai embassy abroad. When you enter the country, then you open the bank account with your non-immigrant status already and deposit the 800,000 for two months and then you go in and extend your one-year visa. The other option is you come in with your visa exempt status and you go to your embassy and request for a letter from the embassy confirming your residency and use that to open the bank account.

Mark Friedman:

And there are some banks we use, which bank more frequently than… I think Bangkok Bank?

Chiara Budelli:

Yes, we do use Bangkok Bank a lot. We like them and I do like their online banking program as well, which is also available for foreigners when you have a bank account with them. And I think we have one more. So John is asking, “For the retirement visa, I understand that health insurance to a Thai insurance company is required?” So yes and no. There are additional type of retirement visa that does require health insurance, but the basic regular 800,000 Baht retirement visa does not require health insurance.

Mark Friedman:

And what’s the one that does? It’s the Non-O-A?

Chiara Budelli:

Non-O-A and Non-O-X. So those are different type of retirement visa which have additional requirements and does require the health insurance.

Mark Friedman:

And let’s just talk about Non-O-A for a minute. That’s a one-year visa, but you apply for that through the royal Thai embassy in-

Chiara Budelli:

Through the e-Visa system?

Mark Friedman:

Through the e-Visa system, outside of the country?

Chiara Budelli:

Correct.

Mark Friedman:

But because it’s a one-year visa out of the gate, you need certain clearances, correct?

Chiara Budelli:

Yes. You need police clearance and you need health insurance. The only difference from Non-O-A and the regular Non-O is that you initially get three months from the embassy with the regular retirement Non-O, and you get directly one year from the embassy for the Non-O-A.

Mark Friedman:

So we think the paperwork for a regular Non-O starting out with 90 days coming into Thailand, opening your bank account, depositing your 800,000 Baht, waiting two months and then going in and extending for a year is a lot easier in terms of your paperwork?

Chiara Budelli:

Definitely, yes.

Mark Friedman:

Is there any other visa that requires insurance?

Chiara Budelli:

The LTR visa, yes, does require health insurance and it can be from any company. It doesn’t have to be Thai as long as it covers Thailand. It does have to mention on your actual insurance that it covers Thailand, but you can also choose from Thai companies as well if you so choose. We usually suggest to our clients a couple of companies that we already use ourselves as well, that does qualify for LTR too.

Mark Friedman:

Including Pacific Cross?

Chiara Budelli:

Including Pacific Cross. Yeah.

Mark Friedman:

And can I say just on a personal note, as somebody who lives here now full-time, I do carry insurance. I qualify for Medicare in the United States. I’ve got a GAP policy, I’m fully covered. But we see too many stories of people having moped or motorbike accidents or having sudden health needs. And if you want a private hospital to cover you and to make sure you’re getting… And by the way, I think the healthcare system here in Bangkok is world-class, I think the biggest risk to your wealth if you live here is not having some form of health insurance.

Chiara Budelli:

Yes. Do we have time for one more?

Mark Friedman:

We have time for a couple.

Chiara Budelli:

Okay. So there’s a question asked, is there an age limit to obtaining health insurance? For the visa purposes, no, but the premium would be higher, the higher your age. For example, my boss is 66, so premium will be higher.

Mark Friedman:

In a few months.

Chiara Budelli:

Sorry. But he does have a health insurance and he can apply for health insurance even though he’s older than 50 years old. And-

Mark Friedman:

I wanted to add one thing to that. What I wanted to add to that is you may find pre-existing health conditions excluded, but that won’t prevent immigration from granting the visa, if health insurance is required. What they are looking for is A, it covers your needs here in Thailand and B, that the coverage limit, for example, under the LTR visa is $50,000 as a coverage limit is in place. So it may be, and I appreciate as you get older and have more preexisting conditions, that you may have more exclusions, but that won’t prevent you from getting a visa.

Chiara Budelli:

We do also have a question that, in which case is a retirement visa not possible for a 71 years old? So the retirement visa has no age limit. It does have the baseline that you have to be at least 50 years of age, but it does not have a limit on how old you have to be for it. So even though you’re more than 70 years old, you can still apply for your retirement visa. In fact, I do have a couple of clients that are over that age.

Mark Friedman:

Let’s just put this all in the context. Thailand will let you stay here for the long-term under three basic categories. One is your age, you’re a mature human being 50 and up, you can be 80 or 90 or 100 and decide to move here. B, you’re contributing economically to the Kingdom in some way. You’ve started a business or you’re working here and you qualify for work permit and a Non-B visa or you have a Thai family and can get a Non-O marriage or dependent visa. If you’re under the age of 50, you are not working here and you do not have a Thai spouse, it becomes more complicated. And typically you’re looking at education visas, ED visas, and those from time to time come under scrutiny by the Thai government. There’s some volunteer visas, there’s some other things you can do. But it becomes much more challenging if you don’t have a Thai family, you’re not over a certain age and you’re not contributing economically to the Kingdom. I think that’s the context for long-term stays here.

Chiara Budelli:

Yes. So Carini also asks, “Just to confirm if you want to work and live in Thailand for two years, would the LTR be the best option?” If your cutout is only two years, I do think that under normal non-immigrant B visa would be a better option. Also, because the LTR is a long-term visa program, so you initially get directly five years. If your plan to stay in Thailand is only for two years, I think the non-immigrant visa would work better just because you only have to do one extension at the end of the first year.

Mark Friedman:

I also think that in terms of approval process, the Non-B is a lot more straightforward if you’ve got a job here. The LTR visa, again, I love the BOI, I think they’re charged, and we all like the BOI because their charge is to grow the economy here in Thailand. If you get a chance to listen to the new Secretary General of the BOI speak, he’ll lay out his five-year strategy for Thailand, it’s fascinating. But it is a new visa program and they initially started with the aspiration of approving these LTR visas within 30 days, then we found it was two months or three months and again, it depends on how straightforward your application is and how easy it is for the line people to review. But if it’s a two-year window and it’s taking you three, four, maybe five months to get approval for an LTR, the Non-B would seem to make a lot more sense.

Chiara Budelli:

Okay. And Ryan is asking, “Any way around the four Thai employees’ requirement with starting a company?” The only way around this is having a Thai spouse, and holding a Non-O visa instead of the Non-B visa that would lower the requirement for Thai staff from four people to two people. That’s the only legal way to do this, so that’s the only option.

Mark Friedman:

I will say that, and again, if you’re going to apply for a corporation under a BOI promotion, that requires a great deal more investment and it’s more sophisticated and a bigger upfront cost to get into the country. But under the BOI, your ability to have ownership of a corporation and your ability to have basically unlimited experienced staff is available to you. There’s one more thing for you, Americans on the line here tonight, thinking about starting a company and going the Non-B route is there is the Treaty of Amity. The Treaty of Amity allows Americans to have majority ownership of Thai corporations. There are additional hoops to jump through with DBD and the US Department of Commerce. Chiara’s just recently done that for a lovely couple, and it’s doable. A little more expensive but gives you-

Chiara Budelli:

Control pretty much.

Mark Friedman:

However, the Thai staffing requirements for the extension, the one-year extension of the Non-B remains. So you can own a majority of your company, but you still have to hire the four Thai nationals unless you’re married to a Thai national. Let’s do one last question and then we’ll let everybody get to dinner tonight.

Chiara Budelli:

What is the best option for a person who wants to retire and move to Thailand and is already married for over 10 years in Thailand with a Thai wife? Well, if that’s the circumstances, you do have two options. The retirement visa and the Thai spouse visa, both of which are good options and the differences, you have a path to PR with the Thai spouse visa, but you don’t have one with the retirement visa. And the retirement Visa does have more financial requirement, like we mentioned, 800,000 Baht in a Thai bank account versus the Thai wife, the Thai spouse visa, which only required 400.

Mark Friedman:

And you can also work. So if you wanted to do consulting someday, or maybe somebody offers you a job and you decide that sitting around on your hammock reading a book isn’t for you, you could still get a work permit under a Non-O marriage visa that will not be available to you under Non-O retirement. And don’t forget if you’re over the age of 50 with or without a Thai spouse, you might qualify for LTR. It’ll reduce your reporting, your extension, all of those requirements, so it may be worth looking at that as well.

It is now 7:30 PM I just want to thank everybody. The turnout was tremendous here. I know we didn’t get to a lot of the questions. I see the stack, I promise you we’ll go through those and we’ll either put up an FAQ on commonly asked questions and we are going to respond. I see one up on relinquishment of citizenship. I’m sorry, Tom or Thomas, we didn’t get to that, but we’re going to open a ticket and we’re going to provide written responses to you on some of these more compelling questions. You can also take your time if you wish, and have a consultation with Chiara and View on any of these matters. But again, we have lots of resources up on our website so you can do a lot of those. Thanks again for your time. We really appreciate it and we look forward to seeing you at the next webinar. Take care.

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Mark Friedman

Managing Director of Baan Thai
Mark is a member of the California Bar and a 1987 graduate with honors from the University of Southern California Gould School of Law.

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