Change Visa From "marriage" To "retirement"

[Cannyscot]

Lopburi 3 mentioned,a couple of times, that last year he changed his one year visa extension from one based on marriage to a Thai, to one based on retirement . He said you can do this as long as your wife agrees to it and will go with you to Immigration to sign a document to that effect. I would consider doing this, and my wife has no objections of any kind, but I am afraid of a hostile or suspicious reaction from the Immigration Bureau officials. The only reason I want to do this is because I like the idea of getting my visa without being dependent on anyone else. I also seem to meet all the requirements needed for the retirement visa extension and dont need a work permit.Perhaps Lopburi 3 or others with experience of this could let me know what the attitude was at Immigration. I dont want to endanger what I have now by being careless!! Sorry for being so long winded!

[Noel]

From recent posts it would appear that Immigration actually prefer those who are over 50 to go the retirement route.

Once you have an extension based on retirement, changing to supporting a Thai wife is where difficulties may arise.

[lopburi3]

There should not be any problem going either way as long as you meet the requirements. I was offered retirement on my first application (and not having a clue) (week of 9-11) and chose not to visit the Embassy or hospital for extra paperwork and there was no problem. Last year decided to go to retirement as wife was ill. Immigration was very happy to change but just needed her signature that she understood there was a change being made. They agreed to accept her note with a medical certificate if she was not well enough to travel and refunded TM.7 charge (I was about 10 days early so had time to reapply again). I have just extended again and time with officer was not more than 10 minutes (although the queue was long and about 3 hours total time). This may be where those upcountry have an advantage (at least for retirement type) - there were 45 people ahead of me at 1100 arrival.

[naka]

I agree with Noel.

Immigration seem to look much more favourably on the retirement option

vis a vis the spouse one.

Naka.

[higgy88]

I live upcountry and a couple of years ago immigration suggested that I change my reason for extension from Thai wife to retirement, without my even asking them about it. I did not do it at that time because I was highly skeptical of their motives for wanting me to change. After thinking about it and asking around, I decided to do it and I am glad I did. The process was much faster, I only needed to supply one copy of all of my documents and not the uusual two, and they approved my extension that same day. Normally all of the paper work has to be sent to Bangkok and they have to approve it, which usually took about 3 months. I suspect that the Thai gov't is actively looking for retires on pensions to come and retire here in Thailand, and this is a good way for the immigration offices to show that the numbers of retires are increasing, so everyone is happy.