@Tod ********

There’s a remark in Thai on the PDF printout of my visa that I says "Health Insurance", but I’m pretty sure it tells the immigration officer to verify my insurance. Since I had already submitted proof of insurance when I applied for the visa, I thought it was a bit strange that when I first arrived in Chiang Mai, they asked to see proof of insurance again before allowing me to proceed.

One additional detail that may be relevant: I returned to Thailand in early March after a short trip, which was too early to renew my insurance. The IO at Chiang Mai Airport asked for proof of insurance, which made me wish that I had the "throwaway" policy for which I was rejected.

@Tod ********

Thanks Tod, I appreciate you. Yes, I found the messages in the spam section which I didn't know existed until you mentioned it.

TurboTax Premier is currently $82 on Amazon. I paid $89 for it back in February, so the price has come down a little.

If you have money in a foreign bank account under $10k, TurboTax will handle the correct forms for you automatically. Over $10k, I'm not sure what happens, so you may want to look into that.

A couple of notes from my experience:

• I did NOT use a VPN while filing.

• If you're using AI to help with your taxes, be prepared to push back and ask follow-up questions. Misunderstandings do happen and you sometimes have to dig to get the right answer. Always ask for verifiable responses, though with taxes there are gray areas.

I was thinking of using one of the expat tax services, but it would have cost $1000+ with all the forms that I needed.

I brought 8 suitcases and 2 boxes into Chiang Mai and paid no import duties/taxes. The "just buy it all here" advice is often unrealistic because they do not know what you would have to replace. Dave Montore's comment from 5 hours ago is 100 percent right.

Your response does not meaningfully engage with the claims or sources and is certainly not coherent enough to constitute a rebuttal.

@Ken *********

Credible allegations have been reported that Elon Musk did not comply with student-visa requirements and that Melania Trump received EB-1 classification without publicly documented evidence of extraordinary ability (per reporting by WaPo, NYT, and AP). That's the fraud you mentioned, and it starts at the top.

@Helmut *******

In the US, immigrants are generally not eligible for free federal government services; eligibility is limited to specific programs and narrowly defined categories. Anything tRump says is a 99% likely to be false, a lie.

Depending on your visa type, you can open a foreign currency deposit account. At K-Bank, the minimum deposit is $5,000 USD if you already have a savings account with them.