Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are asking, "more new protocols associated with 90-day reporting in Thailand?" Look I know for the most part I can have sort of a very stern approach to just getting the information out there about Thai Immigration. What I mean to say is look, at the end of the day, I don't have any illusions about the fact that a lot of the material we cover on here is rather dry. I mean it's Immigration stuff, US, Thai, whatever you want to look at, it is not the most thrilling and compelling and rich sort of content that you are looking for when you are out on YouTube. This is more just for informative purposes, obviously that is a promotional element to it as well, but even I have to say in my sort of stuffed shirt ideology toward Immigration matters where I just sort of take it as it comes, I have to admit between TM30 and 90-day reporting at this point, come on, it is really getting a little bit crazy with this sort of Byzantine bureaucracy and like the pedantic "well they didn't file a TM6 when they came in so now we have got a gap with TM30 which causes us to have to now change our protocols." So you have to refile one every time you come in and out which now is apparently having an impact on 90-day reporting and then 90-day reporting itself is now going through a sort of redundancy which I will get into here.

I thought of making this video after reading a recent article from the Pattaya Mail, that is pattayamail.com, the article is titled: 90 days Immigration report now needs update form. I mean, okay! Quoting directly: "Expats who are reporting their 90-day stay in Thailand with a receipt and a barcode in their passports are now being asked to submit a new TM47 form. That is the traditional application form for the 90 days. This appears to be a new rule at Chonburi Immigration," so let's stop there. This does appear to be Chonburi specific, although as we have noted in prior videos, things that happen in Bangkok Division 1, so Immigration Division 1 here in Bangkok, and things that happen in Pattaya tend to have a disproportionate impact upon expats especially up here in sort of Central and Eastern Thailand, because there is a large population of those folks and they are kind of concentrated in these two areas. At the same time, oftentimes we see trends that occur in either of those places oftentimes will end up going nationwide, so it's not unheard of. That said we are specifically talking about Chonburi here. So quoting again: "This appears to be a new rule at Chonburi Immigration Bureau with the intent of "refreshing" the 90 days database." How about just making a database that keeps the information on its own, that doesn't need to be refreshed constantly. My producer is laughing back here. I kind of almost find this funny because we talk about this stuff all the time and when a protocol change happens, I get it, but really it is asking a lot of people to just constantly be rehashing these really bureaucratic forms and the question remains, for what? Again 90 day reporting, I think and even TM30 for that matter might be something Thai Immigration might otherwise either do differently or might not do at all especially with TM30 where we saw an entire span of decades where we didn't even see the TM30 utilized notwithstanding the fact that there was a provision that TM30 satisfied that has always been present in the Immigration Act promulgated in 1979; 90-day reporting is also noted in there. 

That said, a lot has changed since 1979 most notably I have been born and I am almost 42 years old. It has been a while. Maybe it is time to seriously reconsider all the redundancy associated with doing these check-ins and notifications. I know they are trying to bring on online systems but every time they do it, it just seems, it's like with this "well if you have done it online you still have to file the TM47 because we want to refresh the database”, or whatever that means. At the end of the day all I am saying is look there seems to be a lot of Byzantine redundancy which could be streamlined and maybe hopefully in the future that will happen. We will certainly keep you updated on this channel as that situation evolves.