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ResourcesVisa & Immigration LawThailand Immigration LawIs There a 30 Day Review for Thai O Marriage Visas?

Is There a 30 Day Review for Thai O Marriage Visas?

Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing the possibility of a 30-day review for a Thai O Marriage Visa. I recently received an email from a person who is a viewer and we appreciate viewers sending us emails. We always like to see that. It is a pretty long email, I am going to cut off some of this.

Basically this person is talking about dealing with renewal of their Thai O Marriage Visa and they basically give some background and say that "Look, I have been married for a long time and I have extended before," and I am going to quote directly. They are in Laksi so "On arriving in Laksi Immigration Office this morning, I produced all relevant documents to perfect my type O visa for one year. The Immigration Officer told us that all documents were in order. However in addition to these documents we had to also provide pictures of the inside and outside of our residence." We have seen this before in certain Thai Marriage Visa context. I am making another video contemporaneously with this one. We will get into that in a little more detail. "Moreover, the Immigration Officer told us we had to provide those pictures before the end of the day." "Once we provided the pictures however, the Immigration Officer further added that we had to return in 30 days to receive their final determination regarding my Visa application. Is this a new requirement? From the sounds of it we were not being singled out as we could overhear other applicants discussing the subject of the residential pictures. Some of the applicants were returning this morning to find out the determination of their visa application." 

Long story short and we have done videos on this, generally speaking Immigration has discretion at least in a regulatory level, to make you know kind of whatever administrative rules that they want regarding how issuance of these visas work. Long story short, in a B Visa context, we have been dealing with this here in the firm for years. You go in, you file your B Visa application you get a 30-day stamp. It sits under review and then you come back in 30 days to pick up the Visa. In this context, this Thai O Marriage visa context, yeah I do know this has been the cause of some consternation for other people too. Different Immigration Offices, especially in the Thai O context, oftentimes they would just issue the whole 1 year in one fell swoop. It now appears depending on the Office you are talking about, that this 30-day review is being required. I don't know if there has been a top-down change in protocol or perhaps this is just an administrative change within that office. I will try to look this up, maybe provide some further insight as things progress. 

Long story short, don't be surprised in a general context. Presume you are going to have this 30-day review. You may not have it but better to presume it, hope for the best plan for the worst sort of thing because you might get there and then you are disappointed that you don't end up getting the whole year. But yes, there is a review period. We deal with it all the time with B Visas. O Visas it seems to be kind of sporadic when they require that or it depends on the office but unfortunately it sounds like in this situation you got stuck with one of these 30-day reviews. In most cases, where you are documentarily qualified, the review is just I hesitate to call it a formality, but it basically is just a matter of going through the motions, doing the 30 days, going back and getting your other 11 months stamped into your passport.