Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing yet again the TM30. This has come up in a lot of conversations I have had with folks here recently the past couple of weeks, especially as there have been announcements regarding changes to the protocols associated with TM30 specifically in Pattaya. We are seeing similar things here in Bangkok though but as those are two major expat areas, TM30 policy in either of those places I think is of interest even on a national level so I thought of making this video.

I am making this video as we received an email from a viewer who provided a great deal of insight after they recently were dealing with some TM30 issues; in fact we have made actually to this point, three videos on this topic from that one, from this one specific message because there are three main portions to the message. Quoting directly: "Immigration did say that the normal deadline to update your TM30 of 24 hours post-arrival at your residence will be applied. However, the nice Immigration Officer did say it can be extended to a maximum of 3 days. Personally I will take the 3-day allowance to cover weekends. Failure to announce your return and have new TM30 receipt, will result in a fine of 1,600 Baht. The implication or was that intonation," (good joke), "was that now that I had updated, the 24-hour rule will be applied. Hopefully the above is clear and helpful to you. Probably I am not the first to email this information to you. In another video you asked the question if Immigration are becoming more law enforcement. Perhaps this change is an example of that. Could you be deported if your TM30 was not correct?”

No I don't think people need to overly worry about being detained or deported in association with TM30. I think the most folks need to worry about with regard to failure to file a TM30 or timely file a TM30 appears to be this 1,900 Baht fine. Now that said, again this is anecdotal evidence but this is first hand anecdotal evidence from someone who went to Thai Immigration, talked to them directly and this is currently what they are saying at least at Pattaya Immigration and that is what the announcement was pertaining to initially regarding TM30 in the first place. Do I think that this is an outgrowth of possibly the change in paradigm towards sort of the law enforcement perspective? Not exactly. What I think we are seeing with respect to this is something we brought up in a prior video which is with the phasing out of TM 7, the arrival/departure card, notwithstanding the fact that they do biometrics at the airport when they do intake and somebody is coming through an Immigration checkpoint, there has been sort of a gap created if you will, in a sense, if you look at it from Immigration standpoint where they want to know where your address is at all times. In the past they had the arrival/departure card so you would put something down on the arrival card to say where you were staying. They no longer have that so now it looks like they are imposing a deadline associated with TM30 so they can be sure that you get your present address back into their system.

Again I think reasonable people can disagree whether or not this TM30 policy is a good one, but long story short it looks like it is being implemented so we are going to have to deal with it accordingly. We will certainly keep you updated on this channel as the situation evolves.