Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing re-entry permits and issuance through an airport. I thought of making this video after reading a recent comment on a prior video we did where we were talking about re-entry permits in the context of Thai Retirement Visas. Quoting from that comment directly: "I never did it but you can get a re-entry permit at Suvarnabhumi Airport quite easily." Okay, a couple of things to unpack here. Yeah technically, it is possible to get a re-entry permit at any Thai airport on your way out of Thailand, if it is an International Airport; they generally are going to have a re-entry permit desk. I am not saying this is always going to be the case but in the past we have seen scenarios wherein somebody arrives at the airport to get a re-entry permit and they are told "yeah that desk is not open right now", and so you either have the choice of leaving and not missing your flight and letting your Visa status lapse or waiting around and going and getting a re-entry permit, rescheduling the flight and leaving and dealing with it that way.

I personally have been put into quite a little bind in a real way with regard to re-entry permits because I was leaving Don Muang Airport when I still had a Non-Immigrant Visa, but I was working on my residency and citizenship and all that good stuff and I was at the time probably less than 3 months away from getting serious status sorted out and I had to leave, I think I went to Cambodia and I was going through Don Muang and I hadn't gotten my re-entry permit. I usually do that when I get my Visa extended and I'll get into that in a minute but for whatever reason that hadn't occurred, I was out there. Now I knew that if I did not have a re-entry permit and I was stamped out of the country, my status would be nullified at that moment. What was really spooky to me and it really made me uneasy unto this day, this is why I really don't overall advise people to just depend on the airport service, the re-entry permit desk was behind the counter from where you actually departed. You had to be stamped out in order to go to the re-entry permit desk at that time. I did not like this because again my future status was based on my prior status and technically speaking, if I had been stamped out prior to the getting of a re-entry permit in theory at least, my status was dead at that moment. I explained this to the desk officer at Immigration who did not like it because I was gumming up the works for that person, Immigration is kind of a conveyor belt, they want you to kind of keep moving but I did not want to be stamped out before my re-entry permit was issued. So they had me stand at the side and I had to wait, they put me through a good couple of hours, I went early kind of knowing that I got to deal with this re-entry permit thing so I went an hour and a half two hours early and if you are going to take the chance with re-entry permit issuance before you leave, it is a good idea to show up the airport well, well, well ahead of the proposed flight. They took me off to the side and they said okay we understand your concern, they were perfectly, I saw people who were being stamped out and went and got their re-entry permit after, I didn't want to do that: there was too much at stake to my mind so I stepped out of line and waited and waited and waited. They processed my re-entry permit and then stamped me out. I know that seems semantic but believe me, in my mind it made a lot of difference. 

Long story short, yes there are re-entry permit kiosks at the airports but as I stated a moment ago, in my opinion it is way better idea to go ahead and deal with your re-entry permit at the same time you deal with your Non-Immigrant Visa extension because I think you are saving yourself a lot of issues and a lot of possible, in my case just indigestion caused by fretting and worrying about okay, "am I going to make my flight? Am I going to get this re-entry permit issued? These Immigration Officers really don't love that I put them in this position; all of that is uncomfortable; nobody wants to deal with that so my opinion if you are dealing with a re-entry permit or you want a re-entry permit, get it when you extend your Visa status, don't wait around and do it later while you are on your way out of the country. You have already got enough stuff to worry about, why add one more thing and in this case one more really important thing.