Thai citizenship - Recommendation

[qualtrough]

I have been researching applying for Thai citizenship and am considering doing that. It appears that I meet all the requirements for points -- marriage, kids, company, taxes paid, education, length of stay, language skills, etc., although the good moral standing part might be tough :)

 

I know it can be done by yourself but I am sure a stack of papers is involved so I am interested in having a legit firm assist with the process. One outfit I contacted wants 500,000 baht. Pricey but I would consider that well spent if they take me through the process correctly.

 

So, my question is: Does anyone have a personal recommendation for a firm or outfit that does this? Cost? Thanks in advance for any advice.

[Aditi Sharma]

8 minutes ago, qualtrough said:

I have been researching applying for Thai citizenship and am considering doing that. It appears that I meet all the requirements for points -- marriage, kids, company, taxes paid, education, length of stay, language skills, etc., although the good moral standing part might be tough :)

 

I know it can be done by yourself but I am sure a stack of papers is involved so I am interested in having a legit firm assist with the process. One outfit I contacted wants 500,000 baht. Pricey but I would consider that well spent if they take me through the process correctly.

 

So, my question is: Does anyone have a personal recommendation for a firm or outfit that does this? Cost? Thanks in advance for any advice.

Is that 500,000 baht in total. How far will they stay with you? Can you mention the name if it's allowed here?

[mike324]

Thai wife? save the 500,000 baht, get your wife to go to the Royal Thai Police office across from paragon. If not Thai wife, just get your secretary to help. Find the office that handles the application on 2nd floor, talk to the officer (they will ask sooner or later for 20-30,000 baht).  Officers will assist you and tell you what you need, just follow the steps.

 

Now is a good time to  apply, prayuth has instructed the office to speed up the process. My wife applied last year, we are through with 3 interview screenings. The last interview in front of a group of 10 or so officers that decides if they approve or denied your application. Just waiting to be called and take an oath now. This is blazing fast.

 

I have friends who payed 500,000 to 1 million baht to agencies, many were duped. I'm a naturalize citizen as well, got my citizenship 10 years ago and waited around 4-5  years for the whole process. Agencies are not reliable, there are probably are legit ones, but hard to find. Do it yourself and give the money to the officers, they will call you personally to give you advice, updates, and follow up with progress.

[samran]

If you've got a good executive assistant or secretary, that is all you need.

 

All you are doing is collecting and collating documents you actually have. A lawyer really isn't going to add any value. My wife applied and was in the queue in the space of about three years from start to finish. We are bog standard people who are nothing special.

 

A couple of anecdotal observations:

 

- Special branch prefer if they are dealing with you as the applicant. We had our case officer on Line and SMS. Helped for getting updates and getting the paperwork right. Also helped when due to family reasons, we had to put our application on hold for a few years to head back to Australia.

 

- People who offer/pay tea money usually have a longer wait time than those who never did. I found special branch to be totally above board.

 

- Special branch prefer if you don't bring in any heavy hitters to sponsor your application.

 

- We bought them a big gift basket of Australian goodies at the end for the SB people, which was appreciated. That was about as much as was ever given from us.

 

- The Ministry of Interior is a bit of a black hole, but towards the end of the process they were rather helpful.

 

All the best.

 

[qualtrough]

Thanks everyone. Looks like I will be better off handling this myself. I will make my way to the
Special Branch to get things underway. Should have done this years ago.

 

Question for Samran: What do you mean by heavy hitters? I have several people in senior positions at companies that I was planning on asking to write any required support letters. Can you further describe what you mean and why they don't like that?

 

Thanks.

[samran]

28 minutes ago, qualtrough said:

Thanks everyone. Looks like I will be better off handling this myself. I will make my way to the
Special Branch to get things underway. Should have done this years ago.

 

Question for Samran: What do you mean by heavy hitters? I have several people in senior positions at companies that I was planning on asking to write any required support letters. Can you further describe what you mean and why they don't like that?

 

Thanks.

As part of the application you'll need 4 Thais to come to special branch to essentially vouch for your bonafides. 

 

I has a Mom Luang and a guy who had already been a vice minister (and now a minister in this government) willing to come down to do that. 

 

SB said 'not needed' so we eventually just had friends and family come down. It didn't seem to harm our chances at all. 

 

Work wise, you'll need to document your employment but that is about it.

 

there is an excellent threat about obtatinting nationality on this forum. Plenty of great tips there. 

 

https://www.thaivisa.com/forum/topic/121353-story-of-my-thai-citizenship-application/

Edited September 28, 2017 by samran

[qualtrough]

Thank you Samran and others. I went down there today and got the sheet they had out.

 

Right now the only thing that worries me is the requirement to have donated 5000 baht in the past, with the explicit proviso that you can't make the donation after your application. I have donated to various causes from time to time but never even thought to ask for a receipt. Any recommendations or work-arounds for this one?

[qualtrough]

In addition to my question about the charity requirement above I would like to pose a few more questions from the Thai language document handed out by the Police:

 

#16 Requires a document showing you are of age to undertake legal obligations from your embassy (my translation). หนังสืออรับรองบรรลุนิติภาวะ in Thai.

 

Is this something the as embassy has stock form for (in my case US)? Is there an English language name for this document?

 

#17 (and most worrying) says that you need a document from your embassy stating your intention of giving up your citizenship  once you receive Thai citizenship (That was my translation confirmed by a Thai colleague). This is not contained in the English language brochure they hand out.

 

Can anyone shed any light on this? I thought that dual citizenship was allowed?

 

 

Thanks in advance for any advice, clarification.

 

 

 

[Mattd]

I strongly recommend that if you are serious about applying then take the time to read through the link Samran posted, it will be time well spent, nearly every possible question you can think of will have been asked and answered in this thread and it is monitored by those that have successfully applied in the past, plus those currently in the application process.

 

[qualtrough]

Pardon me, but that thread is 160+ pages long. I didn't see an answer to any of the questions I raised in the first 15 pages and rather than wade through the remaining 150 pages I was hoping that someone with knowledge experience dealing with these three requirements might be kind enough to respond.

 

BTW, I am serious, having visited the office. 

[Mattd]

1 minute ago, qualtrough said:

Pardon me, but that thread is 160+ pages long. I didn't see an answer to any of the questions I raised in the first 15 pages and rather than wade through the remaining 150 pages I was hoping that someone with knowledge experience dealing with these three requirements might be kind enough to respond.

 

BTW, I am serious, having visited the office. 

I understand your point, however, all of your questions so far are answered in the thread and loads more. Compared to the time the application will take in total, skipping through the thread is nothing and it will save you a lot of time in the end, so many lessons learned and experience shared in there, honestly, take the time, it will be worth it.

[dbrenn]

As Samran has said - there's no need to use an agent. I used our company secretary to get the documents together for me, then submitted the application directly. All an agent or lawyer will do is charge a lot of money for doing the same thing, and most have likely never gone through the process either, so will be of no help at all.

 

The people at Special Branch are very nice and helpful and will gladly coach you through the procedure. As for the recency of your charitable donation, you mentioned that you have given to charities before but didn't get a receipt. Try going back to these charities and ask them if they can give you a back dated receipt - so that it doesn't look like you made the donation just to support your citizenship application. 

 

[qualtrough]

10 minutes ago, Mattd said:

I understand your point, however, all of your questions so far are answered in the thread and loads more. Compared to the time the application will take in total, skipping through the thread is nothing and it will save you a lot of time in the end, so many lessons learned and experience shared in there, honestly, take the time, it will be worth it.

 

I appreciate your advice, and continued to wade further through what turned out to be the typical Thai Visa negativity of so many posters, literally page after page of arguing back and forth about the usefulness/uselessness of obtaining Thai citizenship, what a shit hole Thailand is, ad nauseum. It's like wading through a cesspool hoping to find a diamond in a sea of turds. Not only that, but the thread is now 10 years old, and even if I did stumble across what I am looking for there is no guarantee that the information is not out of date or otherwise obsolete, or even that it would even be correct.

 

I therefore do not think I am out of line seeking answers to my very specific questions from the checklist rather than spending literally hours reading 160+ pages in the possibly vain hope that I might find the answer I am looking for. If nobody able to answer those questions has the time or willingness to do so here, so be it. I fully understand that I will be spending lots of time and effort on this project, but make no excuse for seeking answers directly from those with experience.

[Mattd]

Noted, though a shame, as it is probably one of the best threads available on TV, trust me, it improves as the pages increase and becomes a very positive thread, perhaps try looking at the last 50 or so pages as a start.

The reason I suggest this is because there is advise in there that I'm pretty sure you will not have even considered yet and might assist the way that you approach the application.

Either way, good luck.

[qualtrough]

1 hour ago, Mattd said:

Noted, though a shame, as it is probably one of the best threads available on TV, trust me, it improves as the pages increase and becomes a very positive thread, perhaps try looking at the last 50 or so pages as a start.

The reason I suggest this is because there is advise in there that I'm pretty sure you will not have even considered yet and might assist the way that you approach the application.

Either way, good luck.

 

Thanks! I am sorry if I come off as being churlish. I cheated and went back and started at page 150 and found more of the same kind of bickering, with often contradictory advice. I also discovered an important error when I downloaded and printed out the recently posted English translation of the guidelines. That says 2 x 2 photos are required, but the Thai version I got from the SB yesterday says  2 x 2 ครึ่ง, which mean mean 2 x 2.5. I suspect that whoever did the translation overlooked the  ครึ่ง. If that is correct the translation need to be updated and re-posted or there will be some unhappy characters who found their photos rejected.

 

Update: Just noticed that the original Thai doc says 6 photos required for wife, while the translation says just 3!

 

I think what I will do is just gather and submit my docs to my SB handler and let him advise me on their acceptability or lack thereof and any other requirements. I will ask about the dual citizenship letter and if he says that is a must I will ask to see a sample so I know what to ask for at the embassy.

 

The one concern I have at the moment is the charity issue. Dbreen helpfully advised going back to get receipts, but these have been donations of 500 or 1000 baht at a time and I don't even recall the name of the temples or causes. I imagine that getting a backdated receipt is entirely possible from organization X, but I would hate to jeopardize the process if that were to be discovered. 

Edited October 3, 2017 by qualtrough

[qualtrough]

1 hour ago, dbrenn said:

As Samran has said - there's no need to use an agent. I used our company secretary to get the documents together for me, then submitted the application directly. All an agent or lawyer will do is charge a lot of money for doing the same thing, and most have likely never gone through the process either, so will be of no help at all.

 

The people at Special Branch are very nice and helpful and will gladly coach you through the procedure. As for the recency of your charitable donation, you mentioned that you have given to charities before but didn't get a receipt. Try going back to these charities and ask them if they can give you a back dated receipt - so that it doesn't look like you made the donation just to support your citizenship application. 

 

Thanks for your reply. Yes, I have discovered that the 500,000 is entirely useless and will be handling this by myself. I can get all the financial docs from my accts and gather up most/all of the rest by myself. 

[samran]

3 hours ago, qualtrough said:

 

I appreciate your advice, and continued to wade further through what turned out to be the typical Thai Visa negativity of so many posters, literally page after page of arguing back and forth about the usefulness/uselessness of obtaining Thai citizenship, what a shit hole Thailand is, ad nauseum. It's like wading through a cesspool hoping to find a diamond in a sea of turds. Not only that, but the thread is now 10 years old, and even if I did stumble across what I am looking for there is no guarantee that the information is not out of date or otherwise obsolete, or even that it would even be correct.

 

I therefore do not think I am out of line seeking answers to my very specific questions from the checklist rather than spending literally hours reading 160+ pages in the possibly vain hope that I might find the answer I am looking for. If nobody able to answer those questions has the time or willingness to do so here, so be it. I fully understand that I will be spending lots of time and effort on this project, but make no excuse for seeking answers directly from those with experience.

 

The letter of intent to renounce citizenship is only that - an intent. You can change your mind the second after you sign it.

 

It also has no legal affect for countries which allow dual citizenship, who have their own accepted procedures to renounce citizenship, which a usually involves paying a fee and other hurdles (eg Americans and tax obligations being sorted).

 

The letter only really means anything if you are a national of a country which doesn't permit dual citizenship (say China, Malaysia, Singapore) where dual citizenship is forbidden and acquisition of another citizenship means automatic renunciation.

 

As for the ongoing thread on citizenship, appreciate your point on the bickering, but it is a good central resource with (mainly) lots of good contributors there. No need to re-read 150 pages as we all are aware requirements gradually change. Posting there means you'll get a good brainstrust helping you out (both those who have gone though the process and those who are currently going through it).

 

There is also the occasional d!ckhead, but given one of the main contributors there now is also a mod (arkady) then that is kept to a minimum. It is a really useful thread.

 

[qualtrough]

Thank you Samran! I will post to that thread from this point forward.

 

Lot of dickheads. I stopped posting on TV about 10 years ago cold turkey for just that reason, only posting with information requests like this one. Too depressing.

 

One question about the renouncing doc:Is there a standard format I can download somewhere? Is this a document that the US embassy will provide? In other words can I make an appt with the embassy to sign and get one of those?

[samran]

6 minutes ago, qualtrough said:

Thank you Samran! I will post to that thread from this point forward.

 

Lot of dickheads. I stopped posting on TV about 10 years ago cold turkey for just that reason, only posting with information requests like this one. Too depressing.

 

One question about the renouncing doc:Is there a standard format I can download somewhere? Is this a document that the US embassy will provide? In other words can I make an appt with the embassy to sign and get one of those?

 

Don't know the answer to that one unfortunately. Others surely will though. I think Arkady even drafted one at some stage.

 

Don't post much here any more. Actually hadn't for a year. Managed to get myself a full blown stalker so had to lay low.

 

Saw your post and recognised you as an oldtimer, so I thought I'd pitch in. Surprised I even remembered my password for the site!

 

Good luck with it all.

[qualtrough]

Hi Samran. Yes, I go way back too. I recognized your name. It's kind of sad they way that forums just degenerate over time, especially ones dedicated to Thailand. I finally dropped out when I got tired of arguing with people who believe that Farang is an inslut, that Thailand could never be my home, and that all Thais hate farangs.