BritTim

If you have already been refused an extension, and given seven days to leave the country, that order is pretty final. You are not on an extended permission to stay. You have been ordered out of Thailand, and given seven days to comply. A shady agent (for a price) might be able to arrange a very dodgy medical extension, but forget a Covid extension or any other normal extension. It is pretty much impossible. Given the very limited time left until you must have left, I really think Cambodia is the most practical option. I advise you to arrange flights today. The closer you get to the departure date, the more expensive the flights will become.

The explanation that his girlfriend is just his agent for immigration purposes could actually be a great excuse for seeing her.

I am also no medical expert, but I have researched this subject quite carefully. It is complicated. As a general rule, you no longer have active virus in your system 7-10 days after you were infected. However, even in terms of actively circulating virus, there can be outliers. When sensitive PCR tests give positives weeks or months after the end of the acute phase of the infection, this is usually not because of the virus actively circulating in your body. Instead, there are inactivated, dead fragments of the virus that can flake off and give positive results on the tests. When this happens, only very sophisticated and time consuming tests can differentiate between a reinfection (possible, but uncommon) and these clinically insignificant dead virus fragments. However, as you say, those positive tests can cause complications, especially when you want to cross borders. A further complication is that some sufferers of long haul Covid are thought to have small reservoirs of the virus that the immune system has been unable to eliminate. When this happens, especially in immunocompromised individuals, it can lead to new Covid variants emerging in those people that they can pass on to others. There is an urgent need for inexpensive, fast tests that can differentiate between continued presence of an active infection, and simple detection of dead viral fragments. My understanding is that it is not an easy problem.

Is May 2nd an "under consideration" report back date? An application accepted today for the full 60 days would expire 28 May (most likely later if this was not a first Covid extension). Did your friend enter Thailand visa exempt, with a tourist visa, or some other way? Did your friend convert to a non immigrant entry type (by applying for a visa at immigration) since his initial entry into Thailand?

With evidence that you are Covid positive, it should be possible for someone else (probably your girlfriend would be a reasonable choice) to do the extension on your behalf.

Unless the extension has been rejected (in which case they would have called you to tell you) you cannot be on overstay because you go a few days after your report back date when your application is under consideration. It is, in fact, fairly common that immigration is late in approving the extension, and you are given a new report back date (not stamped in your passport) when you go to immigration on or shortly after the report back date.

If not planning to stay in Thailand for more than a month or two longer, forget about getting an extension for your kid. There are no penalties (other than a stamp in the passport) when a minor is guilty of an overstay. (If staying longer, the school might insist that the child has a valid extension.) Especially if using the same immigration office as the one who gave you the 30-day extension, there should be no need for the e-visa to get the "Covid" extension. They know you are legally here on a tourist entry. If they do ask for the e-visa, they are probably looking for a convenient excuse to deny the extension, and would probably find another excuse if necessary.

For the short term, you should, hopefully, be able to get a "Covid" extension, giving you a further 60 days. If possible, get the money back from the company that has not delivered, and work directly with a school with good reviews that can get it done.

Your local labour office will usually be helpful in identifying your entitlements when your employment is terminated, and also in ensuring you receive them if your employer tries to stiff you. This often surprises people who assume that the labour department would side with the employer, especially in Thai versus foreigner disputes. However, experience has shown labour offices generally work hard to ensure fairness.

While not common, it has been the practice at a few immigration offices to quickly check the Thai language ability of those on Non Ed visas/extensions to verify that they are legitimate students.

I agree that yearly extensions become problematic. However, just using the fake marriage for Non O visas for 90-day visits is very straightforward and low risk unless the "wife" decides to make trouble.

When you switch agents, there is no new "startup fee". Indeed, they may give you a promotional price to induce you to switch. The reason why the initial 15 months is much more expensive than the one-year renewals is because the first step is a Non O visa application (taken under consideration and involving approval from division headquarters) preliminary to the regular one-year extension.

Most often, the financial requirements for retirement visa/extension is dealt with via a (probably deliberate) loophole in the immigration procedure. First, for the visa, the only requirement is money in the bank, transferred from abroad, on the day the visa application is made. This only requires the money to be in the bank for one day, and can (these days) be arranged very cheaply, especially with the cooperation of the bank. On the extension, there are seasoning rules. However, this is where the loophole comes in. An immigration official of sufficient rank is allowed to waive the seasoning requirement. There can be legitimate reasons for doing this. For instance, the money might simply have been in the wrong type of account. A senior official aware of this can simply tell you to transfer the money into a supported account type, and waive the seasoning requirement. As far as agent supported extensions are concerned, the official is guilty of abuse of discretion in allowing the extension without funds seasoning (again, the money will be in the bank for one day) but the procedure is technically legal.

Only pursue this if the thought of someone else pocketing your money overrides practical considerations. You cannot win on this without investing more time and money than it is worth.

Contacting the embassy without having a police report in hand will not actually do any harm, but is a total waste of time. What do you expect the embassy to do? Do you think they will give you a new passport without the always required police report to indicate the passport is lost or stolen? The embassy will just tell you to get a police report. Personally, I think the only possible step I might take before filing the police report is to find out if I am really on overstay. It should be possible to find out if you can discover which immigration office was supposed to be used for the extension. (Anyone who really cares about their passports should have wormed this out of the agent before handing over their passport.) If you discover that the extension has been processed, you could reasonably wait another month or so before doing the police report in the hope that the passports will turn up.

Pre Covid, every consulate had its own limits on tourist visas. Every single consulate had limits, based on the number of tourist visas from that particular consulate, or total tourist visas within a particular period of time from anywhere. Some consulates had a nasty habit of placing a visa in your passport and then cancelling it. That made getting fresh tourist visas very difficult anywhere in the region until you changed to a new passport. It is anyone's guess how easy it will be to stay on a combination of tourist visas and visa exempt entries in the near future. With care, 12 months should be possible, but only by carefully researching good embassies to use, as well as avoiding strict entry points when returning to Thailand. I would not count on much more than a year if the steady tighting of rules on long term tourists picks up from where it left off in 2019.

Two questions: How on earth has it taken you two months to find out about this? If the courier company never communicated about the shipment, and charged your credit card for duty/fines without your knowledge, you may have some recourse. However, usually, ensuring everything you are importing is legal, and paying whatever insane duties customs assess is your responsibility. Are you aware that there are storage charges when shipments do not pass through customs promptly? These can be substantial.

Assuming this is not a troll thread, the chances are 80% that the passports have been mislaid (and cannot be located after a search); 19% that the passports were stolen, but not by the agent; and 1% something abnormal. Especially if the passports are sent to another province for processing, the passports will tend to pass through many hands. This provides many opportunities for passports to go astray. Some agents have appalling administrative skills, and are temporarily losing track of passports and applications all the time. There is a very good chance that the passports could still turn up, but unknown when this might happen. If the claim that the OP was threatened to prevent reporting to the police, this suggests that the agent believes the passports may still turn up. This would be a best case scenario, as the couple might then not be on overstay if the extensions were issued before the passports went astray. If filing the police report (safest IMHO) try to find out from the agent where the passports were sent for the extension, and whether the extension had been granted. Unfortunately, it might be necessary to travel to another province to get stamps reinstated in new passports if the extensions were processed prior to the passports going missing. It is a mess.

These are the relevant financial requirements for changing visa type at Immigration for the purpose of retirement (as listed in https://www.immigration.go.th/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/9.FOR-RETIREMENT-PURPOSES-50-YEARS-OLD-NON-O.pdf) Note that these requirements were posted before some embassies stopped issuing income letters/declarations. I believe the same basic options of money in the bank, income or a combination still apply. I cannot find the revised requirements with alternative proof of income via monthly transfers, but my recollection is that it must include 65,000 baht for the previous two calendar months, plus documentation that shows the ability to do so on a continuing basis. Perhaps, @ubonjoecan help with a link or confirmation.

A word of warning: immigration offices tend to be very strict about giving medical extensions. It might be prudent to discuss you plans with the local immigration office, and confirm that they will accept that you are unable to travel with your current medical issues, and that they will provide the medical extension. If you are aged over 50, consider trying for a retirement extension instead.

I think he will be OK. Of course, in theory, the immigration office can see when he applies for the extension that he is newly married; and that he had marriage extensions until just before his new marriage. I do not expect immigration, even if suspicious, to go to the trouble of finding out if there are shenanigans going on, but an official who is an anti agent zealot could decide to do so. The risk is very low.

It gives him a much better chance. However, a new passport does not erase your immigration history. If using an immigration office where they know him, there is still a chance of problems.

Nobody can give you a definitive answer. Often, embassies will not care about your agent assisted machinations in Thailand, but they can make it their business if they choose. Even if you score the visa, you should probably be more worried about immigration when entering Thailand, and looking for a subsequent extension. Your fraudulent immigration history is not suddenly going to vanish just because you were successful with a visa application.

The "seven days to leave the country" is not an extension. It is final. It is almost impossible to get the order cancelled, and substituted with an actual extension. Just, maybe (depending on the text of the latest announcement on Covid extensions) it is appealable on the basis that the immigration official should have given you a Covid extension instead, but erroneously failed to do so. If absolutely desperate, find a good immigration lawyer and discuss the matter. It is a long shot, and I think you have no option but to do a visa run before next Friday.

Yes, since you have entered Thailand on a new visa, you are required to submit a confirmation TM30 for your normal place of residence.