Upsurge In Retirement Visa Extensions

[ratcatcher]

I already explained the sistuation and my points of view in another posts, hav no time for this.

As you wish. Have a nice Sunday.

Just wondering, was Om85 forced to end the discussion or did he choose to?

[Pimay1]

I already explained the sistuation and my points of view in another posts, hav no time for this.

As you wish. Have a nice Sunday.

Just wondering, was Om85 forced to end the discussion or did he choose to?

Beats me. I wasn't trying to wind him up at all. I went back and read all his posts and I still do not understand why he has issues complying to the long term visa rules. After all they are not that complicated. The only thing I could think of was that he does not have the required funds.

[Arkady]

, it seems to me that you missundertood what I was saying, first of all as I wrote in other posts, I don't have only one degree but two, I don't have any economical problems neither, now I have all the requirements to apply for both PR and Citizenship, but I do know many people, europeans, asians, africans and asians who are married to Thais and are foreced to work illegaly here( teaching, english, chinese or working in restaurants, bars etc without wp) because for one reason or another they don't have the resourses to get a degree,the age or others.I think that as in most of countries people married or that have children should be allow to work freely in order to provide for their families, the same should apply for those with PR.

People that come to retire/ work/ invest here are a completly different thing, they don't need to come here, they come here just because they want, but people who have family not. For example in japan, spain, costa rica, panama, us, mexico, r. dominicana,singapore, italy and many other countries people that are married to a national can engage in any kind of payed activity, why? because of humanitarians reasons, and I don't really understant how so many people in this forum can't see that, just to give an example in the case of war, must of investors, retirees etc will be the first in leaving this country, but I just can't, cuz my familly and the familly of my wife to whish I am profoundly indebted( that I see as my own too) live here and they r not going to desert their country, that's my point of view, I still dont have the Thai citizenship but I consider thailand so dear and so beloved as my own motherland and hopefully in the near future I will get my citizenship too, that's all what I meant when I wrote my post.

I don't think it is as easy in many countries as you suggest. For example I worked for a company with a subsidiary in Singapore and two of our Singaporean employees were forced to relocate to Johore and commute from there because they had married Malaysian women and the Singapore govt refused to grant their wives residence. There are also numerous Europeans and Americans who will disagree with you because they have lawfully wedded Thais or people from other lesser developed countries and find they are unable to obtain visas for their spouses to come and live with them in their home country. Yes, more developed countries tend to allow foreign spouses of their citizens to work once they have obtained residence but they are selective about the spouses they let in. Thailand does things the other way round. They let in everyone but don't give them the automatic right to work simply because they are married to a national.

Don't get me wrong. I would be happy to benefit from more rights as a spouse of a Thai and/or as a PR but you can't have it both ways. If Thailand adopted the Western approach of giving spouses of its citizens the automatic right to work, you can absolutely sure they would also adopt the Western approach of being selective about which spouses they allowed in. At any rate I think they would argue that they made it easier for foreign men with Thai wives to obtain Thai citizenship in 2008 by remove the requirement for them to have PR first and that nothing more needs to be done.

The example about Malaysia and Singapore is not valid cuz there is always tensions between malaysia and singapore, but in singapore once you get married to a singaporean, is very easy to work and to get the pr, I am not saying that people who marry a Thai should be authomaticaly allowed to come to live and work here, of course they should check and be sure that is a true marriege not a fraud , exactly like they do in west, and in japan, but once you have passed the necessary checks, then you should be allowed to come in an work freely, almost all my familly live in the US and I still don't know one single case in which and american citizen married to a foreigner could not get a visa and a greend card to his/her husband/wife unless she/he had any kind of criminal record or something like that, I also think that people with pr should be allowed to work here without restrictions but that is another topic

Singapore has also denied settlement visas to Indonesians and Indians married to Singaporeans. It is not automatic and it is made a lot more difficult, if you marry first and ask permission later. I once sat in the visa queue at the US Embassy with two American Thai married couples who complained that they were applying for a settlement visa for the Thai wife for the umpteenth time after being rejected because the husbands were retired and living on social security pensions that were deemed insufficient to support a foreign spouse. Thai Visa is full of threads of British husbands who couldn't bring their Thai wives to live in the UK because they were unemployed or earning a tiny salary.

Thailand has an old fashioned sexist approach and makes it easy for Thai men to import foreign wives but foreign husbands are expected to be bread winners and qualify on their own financial merits. Given the large numbers who do make the cut under the existing rules, I can't see any likelihood of the authorities deciding to relax the rules further and attract more foreigners to come and marry Thai women and stay here. They have a real problem with the 4 million alien workers and the growing obligation to provide social services to them and their children. They need those workers to keep their economy supplied with sweated labour but they don't need impoverished farangs to come and create an additional burden. We might not like that but that is the way they think.

[tonyPhuket]

(12 months times 50K monthly from a foriegn pension) or 1.1 million baht.

I have thought about that possible combination but I never tried yet. Do you not mind to tell me what proof do you need to qualify for 12 months times 50K? A letter from British Embassy? Or a letter from Thai bank? I am sure your response will be valued to this forum.

Edited April 4, 2013 by tonyPhuket