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ResourcesVisa & Immigration LawThailand Immigration LawThe Thai Immigration Office at Bueng Kan Border Crossing in Thailand

The Thai Immigration Office at Bueng Kan Border Crossing in Thailand

Transcript of the above video:

In this video today, we are discussing the Thai Immigration Office at Bueng Kan on the border between Laos and Thailand. We are specifically going to provide some information but I want to be clear, we are making this during the COVID-19 lockdown and although we are doing it now because I think that there are going to be a lot of issues arising pertaining to Border Runs and Visa Runs in the aftermath of COVID-19, this is also a general video with general information on this particular Immigration Office. 

The address of this Immigration Office is 365 Thai Samak Road, Bueng Kan sub-district, Bueng Kan District, Nongkhai 43140. 

For those who are unaware, I make a differentiation between Visa Runs and Border Runs. I stipulate that a Visa Run is a run to a Thai Embassy or Thai Consulate abroad to get an actual Visa in order to return to Thailand. Meanwhile a Border Run is a departure over a border in order oftentimes to get a 30-day stamp sort of reset by re-entering the Kingdom or to get like a 90-day stamp reset in association with a 1-year Non-immigrant Visa.  

So border crossing Immigration Offices have a slightly different “feel” to them for lack of better term. For example the Immigration Office in Bangkok is primarily dealing with extensions as well as 90-day reports and TM30s.  This office will probably be dealing with 90 day reports, TM30s and extensions, but it is also probably got a great deal of caseload associated with the paperwork which just comes part and parcel with processing a lot of in-out folks that are going over the border and coming back in at any given day. 

The thing to take away from this video, every Thai Immigration Office does things a little bit differently. The very nature of the plenary power which resides in Immigration Officers here in the Kingdom provides a great deal of discretion with respect to making factual determinations on a given Immigration case. Meanwhile there is administrative discretion associated with how they deal with evidentiary matters as well as from an efficiency standpoint, how they prefer to see visa applications or visa extension applications organized when they are processing cases through. 

So in short, what may work or a methodology that may be constant in one Immigration Office may not necessarily be the way things work in another Immigration Office.

So, understand especially if you are transitioning from one place to another here in Thailand the way things may have worked at the Immigration Office you used previously may not be the way to deal with things at the Immigration Office you are using down the road.