Integrity Legal - Law Firm in Bangkok | Bangkok Lawyer | Legal Services Thailand Back to
Integrity Legal

Legal Services & Resources 

Up to date legal information pertaining to Thai, American, & International Law.

Contact us: +66 2-266 3698

info@integrity-legal.com

ResourcesVisa & Immigration LawVisa NewsIs an Announcement on Amnesty from Thai Immigration Imminent?

Is an Announcement on Amnesty from Thai Immigration Imminent?

Transcript of the above video:

For those of you who watch this channel for a lot of US immigration updates which we will continue to be doing those as they arise and we will try to make some general videos on Thai Law, but as we are getting into the home stretch of the Thai Immigration Amnesty here in the second week of September, I am going to go ahead and prioritize Thai Immigration news probably for the forthcoming couple of weeks. So just for regular viewers, a lot of things we are going to be doing is going to pertain to inside of Thailand's Immigration; so the Immigration apparatus within the Kingdom. I will be doing videos though as and when needed on information for those trying to travel into Thailand because we do know that there is a lot going on with respect to that. If there are major events that arise with respect to US Immigration we will try to get to that as well but I just want to be clear we are going to kind of try to prioritize what is going on with Thai Immigration internally because I suspect that that is going to have the biggest impact, the most dire impact, on folks who are just here in the Kingdom generally. 

Also, it is worth noting that I think that there is a lot of good information sources out there and I am going to be citing some of them; there are many. That stated, information for those here in Thailand is really fluid. We are trying to keep up with this as best we can. If it is pertinent 1 minute but goes out of date the next, sorry about that, but we are trying to do this as best we can. 

So to start this off, the Thai Immigration apparatus made a lot of announcements last week. We have been researching all of that and trying to deal with contacts that we have there, when we deal with Immigration just generally as a routine course of business throughout our operation here and trying to confirm and firm up some of what has been said. Long story short, there has been some talk that on September 15th, there may be further announcements regarding ongoing issues pertaining to Thai Immigration.

In a recent article from the Thai examiner that is thaiexaminer.com, the article is titled: Visa Amnesty to End with 30-day Extensions on Application as the Focus Moves to Long-stay Visa Holders.  I urge you if you are watching this video, check out that article directly. It is quite long lot. There is a lot of information in there, Thai Examiner yet again. It is very exhaustive in providing as much insight as they can into this issue. 

One thing that came up that I thought was interesting. Quoting directly: "Senior Phuket Immigration official says some news is in the pipeline for long stay visa foreigners after September 15th from Bangkok. Earlier this week a top Immigration Officer in Phuket Lieutenant Colonel Udom Thongchin who is the Deputy Commander on the island, indicated that some news for long-stay foreigners within Thailand is in the offing. The normally prescient official told the Phuket News newspaper in Phuket that he expects some news from Bangkok prior to September 15th." 

We went ahead and went to Phuket News and there is an article from Phuket News:  Tourists to get Unlimited 30-day Extensions to Stay after Visa Amnesty Ends. Quoting directly from that article: "Phuket Immigration Deputy Chief Lieutenant Colonel Udom Thongchin on Tuesday September 1, urged any foreigners caught out by the income requirement to delay filing their applications to September 15th.  Lieutenant Colonel Udom said he expected Immigration Bureau superiors to make an announcement by then." 

So there apparently is information; this particular Colonel was cited as saying that there could be an announcement on Thai Immigration matters.  Now September 15th, the Amnesty ends on the 26th.  So honestly, 11 days is not a lot of time to rectify Immigration status. If you are currently out of status, it is a probably a good idea to take best efforts to go ahead and rectify that status. It remains to be seen at least as of the time of this video, any substantive changes to Immigration protocols regarding Long stay visas.

That stated, again the Amnesty is yet to end but in fact information quite to the contrary of there being some sort of grand Amnesty for all Visa holders in fact it looks more like folks who are here in Non-immigrant status and got caught in the Amnesty. Those folks are going to need to look at regularizing their status sooner rather than later and I am going to go ahead and make some videos on that topic contemporaneously with this one and we will release them as soon as we can.