Bangkok embassy letters to confirm income rapidly going out of favour
Pattaya’s most popular retiree visa is in flux.
Over the past few years, the embassies of UK, USA, Australia, Canada, Denmark and now Norway have decided to abandon pension letters for retirees seeking one year visas and annual extensions. They claim that consular officers cannot actually guarantee the contents are true, as required by some immigration offices, and that they would sooner use their resources on more important matters.
The notion of foreign income letters dates back to the early 1990s when the Thai government was anxious to encourage longstay, older expats from traditional, western markets. The minimum bond required by Thai immigration at that distant time was “any six figure sum”, at least one hundred thousand baht or about US$3,000. Embassies were invited to verify cash or income held in the home country without transferring monies to banks in Thailand which could be difficult for those with a mere 30 days stamp on arrival.
The problem always was, and still is, that embassies don’t have the home data bases to confirm the amounts claimed. The system depended on good will and the honesty of visa-seeking expats. Embassy bosses grew nervous that they might in theory be condoning a fraud or that their letters could be examined by the Thai tax authorities or even by the courts. The British embassy was the first to cancel the service from mid-December 2018 even though it incurred a considerable loss of fee income. “Not worth the trouble,” said one honorary consul at the time.
Victor Wong, a Pattaya-based Thai immigration lawyer, said, “The retirement market has changed a lot since the 1990s. There are now several longstay visas, such as Elite Privilege or Long Term Residence or even the Destination Thailand Visa, all of which require cash in the bank rather than the promise of overseas funds. Many older expats these days are from countries whose embassies in Thailand have never offered income letters, such as Russia or China or Japan.” Victor added that Thai hospitals have lobbied the government to toughen cash requirements in Thai bank accounts because of the failure of some expats to pay their bills.
Today only a handful of Bangkok embassies actually advertise pension letters on their websites. They are mostly from European Union countries, with one or two outliers such as India which actually offers a free service to its nationals. Given that the 800,000 baht bond requirement for the annual retiree stamp – 400,000 baht for the separate married man’s visa – have been unchanged for more than a decade, updated regulations are surely inevitable in the near future. It looks like any embassy involvement is on the way out.
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