Transcript of the above video: 

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing immigration address reporting and witnesses. Let's just jump in. I thought of making this video after reading a recent email from a viewer. "Dear sir, I watch your content" - by the way not Sir, just Ben. Quoting directly: "I watch your content and like the information provided." Well thank you. - "I stay in E-san, Thailand and just applied for my renewal. This year my bank, Bangkok Bank, wanted to see my Yellow Book, stated it was their new rule, and luckily, I had one. In addition" - and this is what is pertinent to this video - "at the Immigration Office they have a new TM7 form and now require one witness, i.e. neighbour to sign and provide a signed copy of their Thai ID. I just wanted to verify the information you provided before was correct." 

Yeah, thank you for that, and yeah it appears again, we talked about this going back a couple of months ago, that it appeared that some provincial banks were going to be requiring Yellow House Books. Now it seems that in Residence reporting, address reporting, i.e. the TM-7 form, now requires a third-party witness to sign and include their ID card. Which then also begs the question, if you have a Yellow House Book, what is the purpose of it? Because if now immigration is asking for witnesses and when somebody like this could present a Yellow House Book - just look here's the document - and by the way, in Thailand under the Civil Registration Act of 1991 which created Yellow House books, as well as the laws pertaining to the Department of Provincial Administration and House Books generally, i.e. Blue Books, there is no more definitive document regarding one's address than that. 

Now I understand, Immigration is covered specifically by the Immigration Act of '79. That body of law covers immigration matters specifically and if you will, and I have done the videos on this, ne'er the twain shall meet between matters pertaining to the Civil Registration Act i.e. Yellow House Book matters, and matters pertaining to immigration specifically; they have requirements regarding address reporting; they had their own rules regarding that. That said, this requirement of a witness to an address reporting, it really seems to be rather onerous, and I question whether or not it's really all that great a policy especially in light of somebody who would have a Yellow House Book. Now I can understand if they said look “Yellow House Book, or you need to do TM7 with this witness”, maybe. But where somebody has a Yellow House Book, I question the need for a witness. 

That being said, this appears to be a development at least provincially. It's important to point out, different Immigration Offices handle things differently from an administrative context; they have their own discretion regarding certain matters. So again, what may be happening in one Provincial Immigration Office may not be happening elsewhere. But when we see sort of data points like this, I always feel like it's a very good idea to go ahead and make a video in order to keep people sort of up to date with regard to what's going on with respect to immigration matters here in the Kingdom of Thailand.