BREAKING NEWS British Embassy Bangkok to Stop Certification of Income Letters

[soalbundy]

2 minutes ago, Mark1066 said:

Who called the meeting with immigration in May? If it was Immigration, they obviously have a problem with the existing system.

Not the system per se perhaps but instead are dissatisfied with the wording or quality of some of the embassies letters, no murmurs yet apart from the UK and USA embassies.

[Mark1066]

1 minute ago, soalbundy said:

Not the system per se perhaps but instead are dissatisfied with the wording or quality of some of the embassies letters, no murmurs yet apart from the UK and USA embassies.

So are we basically saying that the British Embassy is at fault for telling the truth on their letters, i.e. making it clear that they are simply witnessing a declaration rather than verifying the documents submitted to support that declaration?

[soalbundy]

1 minute ago, Mark1066 said:

So are we basically saying that the British Embassy is at fault for telling the truth on their letters, i.e. making it clear that they are simply witnessing a declaration rather than verifying the documents submitted to support that declaration?

There are more diplomatic ways of telling the truth, saying that you have seen the documents showing x amount isn't putting your neck in the noose and yet abides by the rules of the game. Since true verification isn't practical a pragmatic approach has been embraced by both TI and the embassies, turning over the apple cart is an act of vandalism which harms everybody.

[Mark1066]

1 minute ago, soalbundy said:

There are more diplomatic ways of telling the truth, saying that you have seen the documents showing x amount isn't putting your neck in the noose and yet abides by the rules of the game. Since true verification isn't practical a pragmatic approach has been embraced by both TI and the embassies, turning over the apple cart is an act of vandalism which harms everybody.

They do say they have seen the documents don’t they?

[soalbundy]

1 minute ago, Mark1066 said:

They do say they have seen the documents don’t they?

Yes and everyone was happy but then they issued a caveat at the bottom of the letter, totally unnecessary, provocative one could say, TI had to react.

[offset]

22 minutes ago, soalbundy said:

Yes and everyone was happy but then they issued a caveat at the bottom of the letter, totally unnecessary, provocative one could say, TI had to react.

When was that caveat added to the letter

 

[soalbundy]

2 minutes ago, offset said:

When was that caveat added to the letter

 

No idea, fairly recently by all accounts, end of 2017-beginning of 2018, somewhere along those lines.

[billd766]

9 minutes ago, offset said:

When was that caveat added to the letter

 

It was on mine in July 2017 but before that I cannot remember.

[ubonjoe]

This one posted yesterday has it.

 

[offset]

I was just wondering if the letter was changed before or after the meeting between the embassies and the immigration in May, if before it maybe the BE instigated the problems we have now if after it might mean it as been instigated by the immigration

[wayned]

This is a quote from the UK Embassy web page:

 

" British Nationals should now demonstrate that they have an amount of at least 800,000 THB in an account in Thailand for no less than three months prior to the visa application, or a monthly income of at least 65,000 THB transferred into an account in Thailand. For marriage visas British Nationals should demonstrate that they have an amount of at least 400,000 THB in an account in Thailand for no less than three months prior to the visa application, or a monthly income of at least 40,000 THB. A bank statement should be used as the supporting document for obtaining a Thai retirement or marriage visa. "

 

It obvious that the people writing this don't have a clue unless the Thai law has changed.  First, there is no requirement that the 65000 baht be deposited in a Thai bank account, the law says that you must receive 65000 TBH per month but there is no requirement that it be in a Thai bank account.  Second, Immigration will not accept a bank statement as supporting documentation of the 65000 or 40000TBH as proof of the monthly income without the Income Letter from the Embassy.  The twit that wrote this is incorrectly interpreting  Thai law to cover her butt for the problem that she has caused.

 

If you use the deposit method you have to have the bank statement AND also a letter from the bank.  If you use the monthly income option they will only accept the letter from the Embassy and may require back up information, but they will not accept the backup information without the letter.  I checked last Tuesday when I did my yearly extension.

[Spidey]

4 hours ago, Mark1066 said:

Who called the meeting with immigration in May? If it was Immigration, they obviously have a problem with the existing system.

Possibly, and problems have an uncanny habit of disappearing in the night, in Thailand. If everyone had kept their heads down and carried on as normal it would have all blown over.

[soalbundy]

5 minutes ago, Spidey said:

Possibly, and problems have an uncanny habit of disappearing in the night, in Thailand. If everyone had kept their heads down and carried on as normal it would have all blown over.

It could still yet do but not for the trouble makers unless BE agrees to play pretend with due diligence and the US does away with affidavits and goes for the letter supported by documents their citizens will have to rely on lump sums or agents who I am sure will just bide their time until the sun of free enterprise shines again.

[007 RED]

4 hours ago, offset said:

I was just wondering if the letter was changed before or after the meeting between the embassies and the immigration in May, if before it maybe the BE instigated the problems we have now if after it might mean it as been instigated by the immigration

The text at the bottom of the Bottom of the BE letter has been the same since 2014.  The only difference is that it did not have the BE 'seal'.. that was added in 2016.

Edited October 27, 2018 by 007 RED

[007 RED]

6 hours ago, Mark1066 said:

Who called the meeting with immigration in May? If it was Immigration, they obviously have a problem with the existing system.

FYI… A couple of years ago when some immigration offices (including mine) insisted that the income letter was ‘certified’ by the Consular Division (Ministry of Foreign Affairs), I raised the matter with the Pro Consul who issued the letter.  During our conversation she indicated that Consular Officers from all the Embassies have a get-together meeting with Immigration a couple of times a year to discuss problems/issues.  So I would imagine that if a meeting did take place in May it was a normal arrangement rather than an extraordinary meeting.

 

The reason given by my local IO for insisting that the letter was ‘certified’ by MFA was because they (immigration) had discovered that fake letters had been submitted at some offices.

 

Hopefully, the Freedom of Information request which I submitted to the FCO will reveal more details and I will publish them on TV when they become available.

[Dale75]

Well, it's been a long 3 weeks. as I type that I'm frankly amazed that it is so long. The facts don't lie though: the British Embassy (BE) income letter news broke on 08-Oct-18. The US Embassy (USE) equivalent on 26-Oct-18. The trigger for these events/decisions was a supposed meeting between Thai Immigration Office (TIO) and 'major foreign embassies?' sometime in May.
Allegedly, at this meeting TIO indicated that they expected that foreign embassies 'verified' the income claims of their nationals. The UKE & USE subsequently decided that they could not satisfy the TIO interpretation of 'verification' and discontinued their provision of income letters.
(Incidentally, I think that any opinions that think this was a 'cost cutting' exercise have no idea how the UK/US governments view such trivial monies).
Such are the facts (expecting derision from certain quarters). 
Another fact is that any forum will be populated by people with a wide range in intelligence and financial standing (though there is not neccessarily a correlation between the two).
Both the Uk-based and US-based threads have been horribly sidetracked by discussions about international banking, health insurance, investment strategies, property speculation, one-upmanship, politics and good old bickering.
It seems to me (oh, oh. Trouble ahead), that there are only two questions.
1. Do you want to live in Thailand or do you just want to merely give the impression that you live in Thailand?
2. Acknowledge that the differences between 1st World countries (US/UK et al) and 3rd World (or Developing Countries for the PC brigade/SJW) are diminishing as we speak.
If you really want to live in Thailand is it such a threat that TIO would like you to demonstrate this by actually putting some money into the country?
I could go on but I'll call a halt here.

[offset]

51 minutes ago, 007 RED said:

The text at the bottom of the Bottom of the BE letter has been the same since 2014.  The only difference is that it did not have the BE 'seal'.. that was added in 2016.

So I would guess that this withdraw of the letter is down to the Immigration wanting more from the Embassies

[billd766]

10 minutes ago, Dale75 said:

Well, it's been a long 3 weeks. as I type that I'm frankly amazed that it is so long. The facts don't lie though: the British Embassy (BE) income letter news broke on 08-Oct-18. The US Embassy (USE) equivalent on 26-Oct-18. The trigger for these events/decisions was a supposed meeting between Thai Immigration Office (TIO) and 'major foreign embassies?' sometime in May.
Allegedly, at this meeting TIO indicated that they expected that foreign embassies 'verified' the income claims of their nationals. The UKE & USE subsequently decided that they could not satisfy the TIO interpretation of 'verification' and discontinued their provision of income letters.
(Incidentally, I think that any opinions that think this was a 'cost cutting' exercise have no idea how the UK/US governments view such trivial monies).
Such are the facts (expecting derision from certain quarters). 
Another fact is that any forum will be populated by people with a wide range in intelligence and financial standing (though there is not neccessarily a correlation between the two).
Both the Uk-based and US-based threads have been horribly sidetracked by discussions about international banking, health insurance, investment strategies, property speculation, one-upmanship, politics and good old bickering.
It seems to me (oh, oh. Trouble ahead), that there are only two questions.
1. Do you want to live in Thailand or do you just want to merely give the impression that you live in Thailand?
2. Acknowledge that the differences between 1st World countries (US/UK et al) and 3rd World (or Developing Countries for the PC brigade/SJW) are diminishing as we speak.
If you really want to live in Thailand is it such a threat that TIO would like you to demonstrate this by actually putting some money into the country?
I could go on but I'll call a halt here.

 

>snip

1. Do you want to live in Thailand or do you just want to merely give the impression that you live in Thailand?
2. Acknowledge that the differences between 1st World countries (US/UK et al) and 3rd World (or Developing Countries for the PC brigade/SJW) are diminishing as we speak.
If you really want to live in Thailand is it such a threat that TIO would like you to demonstrate this by actually putting some money into the country?

 

To answer your points

1.   I have lived in Thailand full time since 2001 and worked here for 4 years before that. I married my Thai wife in the UK in 2000 and our son is now 14 years old. 

 

2.   Thailand is still a long way behind the west and many developing countries and is held back by the military coups that happen with great regularity. Democracy has never been allowed to develop properly since 1932. Far from diminishing democracy is getting slowly strangled. I can live with this as it does not affect me that much.

 

All 3 of my pensions are paid into my Thai bank accounts and is spent in Thailand and very many posters here do the same.

 

Part of the problem goes back many years and it is that the TIO themselves never bothered to follow up on verification but accepted what the embassy letters said. The embassies themselves are not able to verify what they are told especially in recent years due to the data protection acts in many western countries.

 

Now or even earlier would be a good time for the TIO to sort out exactly what they want to see and to modify the existing law to cover both funds in the bank or alternatively funds transferred to your Thai bank account to prove that you do indeed have the funds.

 

Once they finalise that then ALL Immigration offices nationwide should stick to those rules with NO variations at all.

[Esso49]

2 minutes ago, billd766 said:

 

>snip

1. Do you want to live in Thailand or do you just want to merely give the impression that you live in Thailand?
2. Acknowledge that the differences between 1st World countries (US/UK et al) and 3rd World (or Developing Countries for the PC brigade/SJW) are diminishing as we speak.
If you really want to live in Thailand is it such a threat that TIO would like you to demonstrate this by actually putting some money into the country?

 

To answer your points

1.   I have lived in Thailand full time since 2001 and worked here for 4 years before that. I married my Thai wife in the UK in 2000 and our son is now 14 years old. 

 

2.   Thailand is still a long way behind the west and many developing countries and is held back by the military coups that happen with great regularity. Democracy has never been allowed to develop properly since 1932. Far from diminishing democracy is getting slowly strangled. I can live with this as it does not affect me that much.

 

All 3 of my pensions are paid into my Thai bank accounts and is spent in Thailand and very many posters here do the same.

 

Part of the problem goes back many years and it is that the TIO themselves never bothered to follow up on verification but accepted what the embassy letters said. The embassies themselves are not able to verify what they are told especially in recent years due to the data protection acts in many western countries.

 

Now or even earlier would be a good time for the TIO to sort out exactly what they want to see and to modify the existing law to cover both funds in the bank or alternatively funds transferred to your Thai bank account to prove that you do indeed have the funds.

 

Once they finalise that then ALL Immigration offices nationwide should stick to those rules with NO variations at all.

What an excellent post and my own situation is similar although preceded it slightly and always got married in Thailand.   The biggest difference is that all my pensions I currently get paid into my UK bank.   Now if the TI in the future would accept pension income paid directly into a Thai bank then no problem either. But will have to wait and see what the TI actually accept, if indeed they change their requirements at all for extension based on marriage.

[Moonlover]

12 minutes ago, offset said:

So I would guess that this withdraw of the letter is down to the Immigration wanting more from the Embassies

Given that the US embassy have just announced that they too are no longer issuing letters to their nationals and have sighted the same reason, I think that this is almost certainly true.

 

And I expect more embassies to follow suit in due course, as they will be bound by the same restraints,

[lungbing]

I have kept all my letters from the BE.  In 2010 there was no wording.

In 2011 and 2012  the words at the bottom were " The British Embassy Bangkok accepts no responsibility for the contents of this document".  The current wording started in 2013.

[billd766]

6 minutes ago, Esso49 said:

What an excellent post and my own situation is similar although preceded it slightly and always got married in Thailand.   The biggest difference is that all my pensions I currently get paid into my UK bank.   Now if the TI in the future would accept pension income paid directly into a Thai bank then no problem either. But will have to wait and see what the TI actually accept, if indeed they change their requirements at all for extension based on marriage.

All my pensions from next month will be paid into a Transferwise account in the UK and I then have the choice of when I send it to Thailand plus the rate is a little better than the existing rate I get at KBank.

It will also go into my single name bank account and transferred around to the joint account to pay the bills and draw cash for daily use.

 

AFAIR the Immigration offices require us to use a single account ONLY for funds to be transferred into Thailand but I may be wrong on that. The advantage of online banking is that I can see where the money goes and if necessary so could the Immigration office.

[billd766]

1 minute ago, lungbing said:

I have kept all my letters from the BE.  In 2010 there was no wording.

In 2011 and 2012  the words at the bottom were " The British Embassy Bangkok accepts no responsibility for the contents of this document".  The current wording started in 2013.

I lost about 5 years worth of stuff when my hard drive crashed and I was not in the habit of backing it up in those days. Nowadays it gets backed up to an external hard drive every Friday.

[007 RED]

In the past couple of weeks we have all become totally embroiled in the fact that the BE are withdrawing their letter confirming income to support the extension of permission to stay.  But has anyone actually thought how this letter came about?

 

If you look at the Police Order 327/2557, Section 2.22(3), it indicates Immigration’s requirements in respect of extension of permission to stay based upon retirement and states:

 

“Must have evidence of having income of no less than Baht 65,000 per month, or”

 

The key word being evidence.  It does not specifically state a letter from the applicant’s Embassy confirming income.  However, it would be logical to assume that such a letter would be acceptable evidence to Immigration.  In fact it appears that for some considerable time the Embassy letter has been accepted by Immigration. 

 

So where did this requirement for a letter come from?  I strongly suspect that it originates from the requirements to change visa type – from tourist to Non-O for the purpose of Retirement

http://bangkok.immigration.go.th/en/base.php?page=service# )

 

Section 6 states:

 

“A guarantee letter from the local or overseas Embassy or Consulate, proving a monthly pension of the Applicant not less than Baht 65,000 per month (together with reference documents showing the source of the said monthly pension): or”

 

It also states under the remarks that the Applicant must submit originals as proof.

 

The key words in the above requirements are proving and proof.

 

I suspect that the Embassy letter was adopted by Immigration as a far more convenient way of satisfying the requirements for the extension of permission to stay than having to trawl through a mound of bank statements, bank books and pay slips etc. 

 

If it is established (by the FOI requests that have been submitted) that Immigration have stipulated that the Embassies must prove the monthly pension/income of the Applicant, then this action may well come back to bite them. 

 

As stated in the Police Order 327/2557 2.22(3) relating to extension of permission to stay the Applicant must have evidence of no less than Baht 65,000 per month.  So IOs should accept bank statements, bank books, pay slips as indicated in the Embassy announcement?  Can/will they (Immigration) refuse to accept such evidence?  That is the 64K dollar question.  Only time will tell. Watch this space.

[luckyluke]

^

Fees from a Thai bank when using Transferwise?! 

 

[wayned]

9 hours ago, billd766 said:

All my pensions from next month will be paid into a Transferwise account in the UK and I then have the choice of when I send it to Thailand plus the rate is a little better than the existing rate I get at KBank.

It will also go into my single name bank account and transferred around to the joint account to pay the bills and draw cash for daily use.

 

AFAIR the Immigration offices require us to use a single account ONLY for funds to be transferred into Thailand but I may be wrong on that. The advantage of online banking is that I can see where the money goes and if necessary so could the Immigration office.

My two pensions from the US are deposited on a monthly basis into Bank accounts in Thailand, one into SCB and the other into Bangkok Bank.  They show up as monthly deposits on in the bankbook and total well more than the 65000 baht required.  I But, according to the IO at the Nakhon Sawan office, that I talked to on 16 October, they will not accept the deposits as proof of monthly income without the Income Affidavit from the Embassy.  She explained that the "law" required the Income Affidavit and until the "law" is changed they will only accept the letter!  Do you really think that the Thai government can get their head and ass together and pass a law that will benefit farangs in a reasonable period of time?\, or for that matter even find anybody that is interested in doing it

[luckyluke]

      I believe we will see amendments on the famous police order. 

When? is another question. 

 

[Moonlover]

3 hours ago, richiejom said:

Whats the percentage fee on Transferwise?  I only used them once and I remember the 500 baht fee from Kasikorn but speed was great.

You can easily find out for yourself by going to their website and initiating a dummy transfer. All the information you need is on that site.

 

500 baht fee. Why so? The last leg of a Transerwise transaction is a domestic bank to bank one. There shouldn't be any fee. 

Edited October 28, 2018 by Moonlover

[Esso49]

3 hours ago, wayned said:

My two pensions from the US are deposited on a monthly basis into Bank accounts in Thailand, one into SCB and the other into Bangkok Bank.  They show up as monthly deposits on in the bankbook and total well more than the 65000 baht required.  I But, according to the IO at the Nakhon Sawan office, that I talked to on 16 October, they will not accept the deposits as proof of monthly income without the Income Affidavit from the Embassy.  She explained that the "law" required the Income Affidavit and until the "law" is changed they will only accept the letter!  Do you really think that the Thai government can get their head and ass together and pass a law that will benefit farangs in a reasonable period of time?\, or for that matter even find anybody that is interested in doing it

I am sure that after reading all the posts on Thai visa regarding this subject, then the Thai Government will prioritise everything on their current agenda to make cognisance of your request to "get their head and ass together" and pass a law that will benefit farangs". After all what could possibly be more important to them than kowtowing to "self important" TV members.

[Moonlover]

3 hours ago, wayned said:

My two pensions from the US are deposited on a monthly basis into Bank accounts in Thailand, one into SCB and the other into Bangkok Bank.  They show up as monthly deposits on in the bankbook and total well more than the 65000 baht required.  I But, according to the IO at the Nakhon Sawan office, that I talked to on 16 October, they will not accept the deposits as proof of monthly income without the Income Affidavit from the Embassy.  She explained that the "law" required the Income Affidavit and until the "law" is changed they will only accept the letter!  Do you really think that the Thai government can get their head and ass together and pass a law that will benefit farangs in a reasonable period of time?\, or for that matter even find anybody that is interested in doing it 

I do not believe there is any such law. It has simply become a standard procedure, adopted by most, or maybe all of the offices around the country.

 

All Thai Imm need to do is to accept that there will be no more letters from the British or US embassies (and maybe others to follow) and adapt their procedures accordingly.

 

The Thai government does not have to change any laws to achieve that.