BritTim

Whether you made a mistake depends on your ongoing travel plans. If you travel outside Thailand on a frequent basis, it may be more convenient to come and go on the multiple entry visa, rather than ensure you do not need to travel during the under consideration period for an extension. If you will be mostly in Thailand, with only the occasional overseas trip, then it will likely be better to have the one-year permission to stay with re-entry permit(s).

What is the age of your son? Are you on good terms with the mother? If you can legalise your status as the boy's father, and have 400,000 baht in a Thai bank account in your name only, receiving an extension of your permission to stay based on your Thai son is doable.

Most airline systems do, in fact, correctly reflect Thai Immigration rules, and will not insist on six month passport validity. That does not change my advice. Do not travel with a passport that expires within the next six months. Too many complications are possible.

If you choose a good care home, I regard Thailand as much better than most countries in the West for those suffering from dementia. This assumes he is financially secure. The care home will ensure that medical and immigration issues are dealt with. There is just one exception I would caution you about. Thailand is not good at hospice type care where the objective is to maintain a good quality of life for people dying of conditions like cancer.

The transfer of your existing permission to stay from the old passport to the new one does not change it in any way. The expiry of your permission to stay will be whatever it states now.

Generally getting out of one country requires entering another country. Sneaking out of Thailand across a border will mean illegal entry into another country (a serious offence in that country to add to his legal issues in Thailand). I guess if he is a good swimmer, and can get good faked stamps in his passport, he might be able to turn up somewhere claiming to have been shipwrecked (if looking for a script for a good movie). However, in the real world, the Thai authorities will be contacted, and his lack of a legal departure from Thailand will be discovered. It is not 1970 any more.

At the current time, no. If you have a recent bank statement in English (or with a Thai translation) a foreign bank account is accepted.

The most detailed report of a detention at Phuket airport was for someone detained at the departure gate. If leaving on an international flight, that would presumably mean that he had passed through Immigration, paying the fine for the overstay, and receiving the ban from returning to Thailand. You cannot get airside in the international area without doing this. To subsequently arrest someone at the departure gate after that would seem unreasonable. In this specific case (and probably others) the actual circumstances must be different. Perhaps, they were taking a domestic flight and were caught by some kind of facial recognition system for criminal activity. Maybe, immigration officials were checking the passports of those taking domestic flights. At this stage, I am not ready to conclude that leaving on an international flight will send you to the Immigration Detention Centre.

Leaving with no detention is not difficult. The hard part is being able to come back/

The possession of a work permit has no effect on the end date of your permission to stay. Further, you did not receive the work permit on the strength of your Non O visa. You received it based on your employment. If you do not want to leave by 31st January, you will need to apply for an extension of your permission to stay. Immigration will probably initially want you to do so on the basis of your Thai spouse (assuming that was the reason for which you were granted the Non O visa). They might, instead, allow you to apply for an extension based on working if you can meet the requirements for that.

What is the expiry date of your current permission to stay? If your permission to stay is based on entering with a multiple entry visa, then you will have been given a 90-day permission to stay. You must either leave by the end of that period, or apply for an extension of your permission to stay. If you have received a one-year extension of your permission to stay from your local immigration office, then you do not need to leave Thailand until the expiry of the extended permission to stay, but need to do 90-day address reports.

That is all quite normal. The waiving of the fine for a one-day overstay only applies to Suvarnabhumi and Don Muang.

Certainly not true of the UK:. See, for instance, https://www.britishairways.com/cms/global/pdfs/BASI_5_Environment_Policy_July_2023_v2.0.pdf

For a first one-year extension from a 90-day permission to stay from a visa, the funds only need to be in the bank for two months. To qualify for a one-year extension based on retirement after that, you need to have had 800,000 baht in the bank for three months after your last extension was granted and for two months before the the new application, and 400,000 baht in the bank for the remainder of the previous 12 months. There are alternatives based on income but, again, those need proof of income covering the entire prior 12 months.

That will not work. In the past (and probably still) there were fixers who were able to resolve long overstays without blacklisting. If able to come up with serious amounts of money, an experienced agent will probably be able to give him a referral to one. At the airport, too many eyes can see what is going on. Falsifying his Immigration history or getting a special dispensation from the Minister is simply not going to be possible.

When you face deportation, there is no theoretical limitation on where you can go, and which airline you can use, but ... Under international law, the airline and the country you are being deported to must be informed that you are a deportee. Almost invariably, they can and will refuse to accept you. In nearly every case, you will be deported to your country of citizenship (which is obligated to receive you). Further, without special negotiations, the only airline that is likely to accept you is your country's national carrier, not a low cost airline.

Unfortunately, his idiocy is liable to end up hurting others than just himself. I hope his family will be able to deal with the aftermath.

How recent? Reports from a few weeks ago suggest a wait of about 15 days.

A marriage extension requires sign off at Division headquarters. That makes the extension very difficult to arrange by an agent if you do not meet the usual requirements. Most agents cannot help. If an agent can do it, you should expect it to be quite expensive.

You can only get a re-entry permit at the airport on the day you are leaving on an international flight. They would not give you one even if you were just about to take a domestic flight to Bangkok, immediately intending to connect with an international flight out of Thailand.

That is what the law states. However, even the most anal immigration office will accept a TM30 notification done a few days after your return without penalty. Also, pursuant to rule changes in 2020, there is supposed to be no need to do a new notification if returning to your permanent address after using a re-entry permit, or the same multiple entry visa used for the previous entry.

I think the answer provides good practical advice. I would though add that, technically, you are supposed to ensure that a TM30 notification has been done. Although unlikely, it is possible for Immigration in your area to do a sweep looking for people who have not complied with the rules. Their real objective is to find overstayers. However, if you are caught up in such a sweep, you will face a fine for failure to ensure the TM30 notification was done.

You were wise to apply on a Wednesday. Probably, you applied on a Monday or Thursday in the past when it can be very busy. It is true that many who used to go there no longer do, but that is mainly because they are no longer a good option when applying for tourist visas.

That depends on the Immigration office. I think Jomtien accepts applications for a one-year extension up to 30 days before the expiry of your current permission to stay (with the actual stamp in your passport that day or the following day). They might agree to do it earlier if you can provide proof that your overseas trip is for an essential purpose.

I agree. I was initially sceptical, but the whole LTR visa program has been well conceived and implemented. I am especially impressed that there has not been a hint of corruption around the whole process.