Have I been fooled?
On April 1, the Bangkok Post ran an article titled "Govt lures wealthy foreigners", describing exhaustively how this country wants to attract wealthy retirees and investors, promising among other pipedreams to, and I quote: "...amend regulations governing foreign property owners to allow them to buy houses in Thailand more easily."
We thought it was an excellent April's fool submission, as we all know how this country, and more specifically the Immigration Bureau, is treating us retirees with endless requirements ranging from the completely useless 90-day reporting we have to perform every three months repeating and repeating again and again that we confirm living at the exact same location for 15 years or the painful yearly visa extension we also need to process for us to be granted the privilege or residing in the country of eternal smiles for another 365 days.
And allowing foreigners to buy houses more easily? Ha ha ha. We all know that we will never be able to own land in this country. I own a house, but my wife owns the land; that is the law, and it will remain like this during our lifetime. Period.
To obtain Thai citizenship a foreigner needs to work at least three years and pay official taxes prior to request it, so all of us retirees need to remain "aliens" for the rest of our lives, the derogatory term the Immigration Bureau is labelling us, even though we have lived here for 30 years like I did or if married to a Thai, which is also my case.
The joke was good. Thank you Bangkok Post for this marvelous April's Fool announcement.