Red Phoenix

Of course you can stop using an Agent. I never used an Agent. Neither for my initial 90-day Non Imm O Visa for reason of retirement application, nor for the yearly extensions of that Visa. It goes without saying that in such case you need to fully meet the Immigration requirements for these applications. Note, that when you made use of an Agent that by-passed the financial requirements (evidence of +800K/+400K on your Thai bank-account in the past 12 months), that you would need to meet those requirements before being able to do your next extension yourself. Alternatively, you would have to make a border-run to 'kill' your current Permission to Stay, then return Visa Exempt, and apply 'with a clean sheet' for a new 90-day Non Imm O Visa for reason of retirement subsequently - 3 months later - followed by your 1-year extension.

The Mea Culpa should come from you, as dr Jack was fully correct. To clear up any misunderstandings: When applying for the 1-year extension of your Non Imm O Visa for reason of retirement you need to show TWO PIECES of evidence that you met the financial requirements: # That you have a personal Thai bank-account on which you keep the required funds - that's the Bank Statement issued by your thai Bank that shows that you are the owner of a Thai Bank-account and the balance on the day that Statement was issued. So you need to do a transaction on the day of application such that the Balance reflects your current status on date of application. # That you maintained the required funds for the 12 months preceding your application (the first 3 months keeping +800K, the next 7 months you are allowed to lower that amount as long as it does not slip below +400K, and then again +800K for the last two months preceding your application). To provide evidence of that some Immigration Offices simply want to see your Bank Pass-book (updated on the day of application) so that they can check that you met the requirement over the past 12 months. But many Immigration Offices want on top of the Pass-book that you also provide a Bank-transaction Statement issued by your Bank, which shows all the transactions that were made on your Bank-account in the past 12 months. The transaction made on the day of application might not be on that Bank-transaction Statement when you kept the funds on a Fixed Deposit Account and got hold of it on day of application, but document #1 your Bank-Statement will provide the Balance on day of application

And the obvious question whether the train driver was mandated to take the jabs in order to keep his job was not addressed. But the fact that he needed CPR is already an indication...

He used incorrect terminology, but everybody understands that he is referring to a Visa Exempt entry which will provide you with a 45-day Permit to stay stamped in your passport by Thai Immigration on entry. Note that it is not decided yet by Thai Immigration, whether such Visa Exempt 45-day Permit to stay on entry will be prolonged after 31 March. If not it will be back to the previous 30-day Permit to stay on entry.

To illustrate the 'unpleasantness' which they might be facing. > If Immigration is very lenient - the minimum would be that they will have to leave Thailand asap (Immigration would in that case probably provide them with a 7-day permit to enable them to organize themselves and leave). That is because their invalid Permit to stay makes it impossible for them to apply for a new Visa or extension (as they cannot meet the requirements for such new application), hence they have to leave Thailand in order to start from scratch again. In that case a border-run would provide them with a Visa Exempt entry, and that VE Permit to stay would then allow them to apply again for the 90-day Non Imm O Visa, but this time it has of course to be fully legit (with required funds in bank). The above would be the very minimum, but it is well possible that they would on top also have to pay a hefty fine for over-stay < all the time that they stayed in Thailand on that non-valid Visa/extension >. And if Immigration really wants to set an 'example' deportation and a ban to enter Thailand for x years could be their fate.

Chiang Mai Nakhon Ratchasima Khon Kaen Sakhon Nakorn Chaiyaphum Kalasin Phrae Yasothon and Roi-Et.

You probably meant PRIOR to the 45 days. The onward ticket to a destination outside Thailand should be on a date PRIOR to the expiry date of the 45-day Permit to stay stamped in your passport by Thai border-immigration on entry. An on-line onward-ticket only costs approx 12-15 US $, and is delivered instantly to your e-mail box after your credit-card payment. It is a fully legit means of meeting the requirement as it is an ACTUAL reservation, but the companies providing that service automatically cancel the reservation 48 or 72 hours after purchase. That's no issue because by that time you are already in Thailand, when you buy the onward-ticket the day before your Thailand bound flight departs.

Does that Agent provide an extension gotten at Pattaya Immigration, or does he get your extension in an up-country Imm Office where he has connections (e.g. one of the 9 ones that are currently under scrutiny)?

It is correct that Thai Immigration has condoned the practice to continue for decades. But that doesn't make it legal. And occasionally a precedent has to be set to show-case that they are not allowing corruption. Those cases are often triggered as a result of internal Immigration strife/jealousy, or when some Officers become too greedy, or are not providing the 'fair share' of their shenanigans to higher-ups. But the point is of course that applicants that got an 'invalid' Permit to stay, because the Agent they used bribed an Imm Officer to overlook that the requirements for providing the Permit were not met, can - and have been in the past - become collateral damage in such an internal Immigration clean-up exercise.

# You wrote: If there is any wrong doing it would be between the agent and immigration , not the applicant. That's only partially correct. Indeed the Imm Officer accepting and the Agent handing out the bribe, are guilty of corruption. The applicant will of course plead 'ignorance' claiming that he was not aware that the Agent which he engaged was bribing Immigration for his application, and it is correct that he will not be charged for partaking in the corruption. But that does not mean that there are no consequences for the applicant, because as a result of his Visa/extension being acquired in a non-legal way it is invalid. And so he will face the consequences of 'being caught in Thailand without a valid permission to stay'. And the penalty he will receive, will depend on how long he was already staying in Thailand without such valid permit. # You wrote: I have not heard of a prosecution of a agent or immigration officer , have you ? I know of at least one case some years ago where Immigration officers that were exposed as being on the take after an internal Immigration investigation, were fired and prosecuted for corruption (but I don't know the sentences which they received). And the Agents that bribed them have been stripped of their licenses to operate (but I don't know if they have been prosecuted).

In the SiSaKet Imm Office a Residence Certificate is provided free of charge. (as it should be).

Andrew Dwyer already responded to your post, and he is fully correct. #1 - When having entered Thailand VisaExempt or on a 60-day Tourist Visa, you can then apply for a 90-day Non Imm O Visa at the Imm Office of the province where you plan to reside. This has to be done when you still have at least 15 days left on your permit to stay as stamped in your passport by border-immigration on entry. Note that in some provinces, they require 21 or 23 days before Permit expiry. In case you have too little time to prepare for the application, you can also apply first for a 30-day extension of your Permit to stay (costs 1.900 THB). Those 15 (or 21/23) days are required because your Non Imm O Visa application has to be approved by Divisional Headquarters of the province where you are applying, and that process can take up to 2 weeks. So that minimum of 15 days is meant to avoid that your Permit to stay expires before Div Headquarters has approved your application (which is just a bureaucratic thing as the provincial Imm Office does not want to 'lose face' by submitting an application that does not meet the requirements). Note that Immigration does not keep your Passport during the process, but you have to return on the day indicated to have the Div Headquarter approval for the 90-day Non Imm O Visa based Permit to stay, stamped in your Passport #2 - When having entered Thailand with a 90-day Non Imm O Visa, you will receive on entry a 90-day permit to stay stamped in your passport by border-immigration (if you used #1 the local Imm Office will have stamped the 90-day permit in your passport). And ultimately till the day of expiry of that Permit to stay, you can apply at the local Imm Office of the province where you plan to reside for the 1-year extension based on that original Non Imm O Visa. Such application for a 1-year extension requires seasoning of the required financial funds (+800K for 'retirement' / +400K for 'marriage') for two months before application. Note that if you apply for reason of dependent Thai children there is NO seasoning requirement, and that if you are a woman married to a Thai man that NO financial funds are required).

Yes, they would still have a record of you having stayed in Thailand previously (even if you re-enter with a new passport). But there would be no incentive at all for Immigration to lift your earlier files. So exiting Thailand and re-entering (be it with a new Non Imm O Visa, Tourist Visa or Visa Exempt) would allow you to start anew and become totally legal again.

Nope

I am not anti-Agent. They can provide a useful service if you are unsure or not knowledgeable on how to navigate the Thai visa-jungle. And I have no objections to them 'fixing' the financial requirements for your Visa/extension application, as long as they are honest about it and don't tell you that it is fully legal and with no consequences when being caught. Re my 'ill informed' content: You should try next time when you apply for your 1-year extension (without using an agent) to see how the Imm Officer would react when you cannot show evidence of having kept the funds for the required period on your personal bank-account.

Why? Because it is not easy to navigate the Thai visa-jungle. An anecdote: I personally know two farang that were so gullible as to believe the Visa Agent they turned to, that he (the Agent) could secure a 'legit' Visa and subsequent extensions for them without having to park the required funds on a personal Thai bank-account. Worse: one of those farangs was married to a Thai national and had dependant children. So instead that the Agent advised and helped him with applying for a Non Imm O for that reason (which only requires +400K on a personal Thai bank-account at the moment of application, after which you are free to use the funds as you please), the Agent got him a Non-Imm O Visa and subsequent extensions for reason of retirement (as that was easier and more profitable for the Agent, than doing it the 'legit' way and applying for reason of dependant children). My friend is 'hooked now' and has to rely on that Agent for servicing him each year for the Non Imm O retirement application, since he cannot show that he met the financial conditions for the extension that was issued to him, and thus cannot apply for a new extension without Agent help to bypass the financial conditions. He obviously wasn't pleased when I explained it to him as he was under the conviction that he had a fully valid extension. And it would have been easy for him to get the required + 400K for a couple of days to meet the 'dependant children' financial requirement. Note: In order to legalize his situation he would have to do a border-run to kill his present Non Imm O retirement Permit to stay, and on return then apply for the Non Imm O Visa for reason of dependant children. The above goes to show that the farang that made use of the Agent service to bypass the financial requirements, were/are often not fully aware of the consequences of doing so. And even if they were, the 'totally legal' claims by Agents and some posters on this Forum, might have pushed them to take the risk. And then of course there are those that simply did not have the required funds, and were desperate to stay in the Land of Smiles. If I were as good as broke and the only way of staying in Thailand with my lovely Thai lady would be to 'cheat' by using a fixer Agent to secure my Visa/extension, I would probably go that route too. So I feel for the farangs that might be sacrificed as collateral damage in this internal IO corruption clamp-down saga. And I would advise all those that are living here in Thailand on a non-valid extension stamp, to carefully consider whether it is worth the risk if they have the financial means to do it the 'legit' way.

Since you do not believe it, that will spare me the effort of looking for the specifics. Also, the 'discretion' of the Imm Officer you are mentioning, has to be bought by the Agent or the applicant for a hefty fee, and corruption is the term to be used for such practice.

You are mistaken. There IS a requirement to maintain the required bank-balance during the validity of your Non Imm O permission to stay. And it is being checked (not 'waived') by the Imm Officer when you apply for your next extension whether you met those conditions.

Yes the stamps in your passport are valid. BUT if you got them by bypassing the financial requirements using an Agent or corrupt Imm Office, that makes them invalid. At border immigration they will not be able to detect this, but if an Immigration Officer requests you to show your Bank pass-book as evidence that you are still meeting the conditions under which the Visa/extension was provided, you would not be able to do so.

The Visa/Extension stamp you received in your passport is not fake. But the process by which you received it - when making use of an Agent and/or corrupt Imm Officer to bypass the financial requirements - makes it invalid. Many people seem not to be aware that the Visa/Extension has been provided under the condition that you continue meeting the financial requirements under which it was issued. And when you got it in an 'under the table' way, you will not be able to provide that evidence. It's a simple mater of an Immigration Officer asking to show your Bank Pass-book to see whether you still meet the conditions under which it was issued.

I hope - for all the farangs that used an Agent to circumvent the financial requirements for their Visa/extension - that you are right. But if Big Joke is determined to weed out corruption in the local Immigration Offices, he would have to set some examples by ousting a bunch of Imm Officers 'on the take' by overlooking the financial requirements in Visa/extension applications. But the farangs that were serviced by these Imm Officers might turn out to become collateral damage in such process. There are many Immigration Offices (e.g. my own SiSaKet one) where any hanky-panky with meeting the requirements is strictly prohibited. But I am pretty sure that it would be tempting for Immigration Officers, when some of their colleagues in other provinces are making a multifold of their monthly salary by simply overlooking that a requirement was not met. And Big Joke knows that without some examples being set from time to time, the practice would gradually spread to more and more offices.

The only plausible reason for doing so, is that he got his Visa/extension in Pattaya and so for Immigration purposes he is a Pattaya resident and has to do his 90-day reports there (probably not aware of the on-line or postal option to do so). It's as good as certain that he got his Visa/extension by using an Agent to circumvent the financial requirements, and so he is avoiding to relocate to the actual province where he is living. Such a relocation requires a visit to the Immigration Office and he would be concerned that the local Imm Officer might ask him to show his bank pass-book that he meets the conditions under which his Visa/extension has been issued (which he cannot show if the Agent circumvented the financial requirements) and that would expose him as being in Thailand on a non-valid Visa/extension.

Farangs that made use of a Visa Agent that circumvented the financial requirements for acquiring their Visa/extension, do not have a 'legit' Visa/extension. And that is irrespective of the reason why they made use of the Agent (some were probably being told the fable that it was a fully legit but cheaper way to get hold of their Visa/extension). And previously there was very little risk that your file would be lifted in a 'crack-down' by Immigration Headquarters on corrupt Imm Officers, but it has happened in the past also and farangs been deported and denied re-entry to Thailand for 5-10 years. If your Visa or extension stamp shows one of those 9 offices currently under scrutiny (it's the first line of the Visa stamp that tells WHICH office issued it) and you are worried, you can PM me to discuss your options.

Let's hope that there is not too much collateral damage of farangs being deported because they made use of Agents that circumvented the financial requirements for their Visa/extension by having it handled at one of those 9 offices currently under scrutiny.

There is nothing wrong with using a Visa Agent to help you with your application and navigate the often complex Immigration requirements. Such a hand-holding/representation service typically costs approx 5.000,- THB. But when using an Agent (or the Agent suggesting you) to circumvent the financial requirements, you should be aware that a Visa/extension acquired that way is not legit. The risk is very small that your file will be lifted in a 'crack-up' operation by Imm Headquarters, but it is not non-existing as several farangs have found out in the past resulting in them being deported and denied access to re-enter Thailand for 5-10 years.