Difficulties in having O/A documents notarized in U.S. (solved)

[Lee4Life]

   I just arrived on a O/A retirement visa obtained from the L.A. Consulate. I live in Washington State and used the mail-in method, all of the requirements were met as per their website and I received our passports with the new visas back in two weeks.

   I ran into difficulties obtaining a notarized statement from my bank verifying the funds in my account. The bank has their own notary but told me it was "against corporate policy" to notarize the statement for me as it could result in liability issues if found untrue. (how could the statement be found untrue when it is to verify an amount of money in an account in their own bank?)

    I ran into the same problem when trying to obtain a notarization for the medical document, the doctor and I went to a public notary and they would not notarize the document because of...you guessed it...."liability issues". 

     The only thing I could figure out to do was to make out a "statement of fact" that I knew these documents to be correct and add a notary clause (downloaded from the internet). I then had a notary "notarize my signature" on that. I am grateful that the L.A. Consulate accepted this method. I had e-mailed the consulate at the first hint of problems but did not receive their answer until I had already sent off the documents. They indicated that there would not be a problem if the documents were original, I would guess they are seeing quite a lot of this same problem from other applicants also.

      As they say, all is well that ends well. I just wanted to post this in case it helps someone else out there who has or will run into the same problem.

[Langsuan Man]

This problem has come up before and those who are forced to use the LA Consulate and their notary requirement.  Chicago is the only other Thai Consulate that has this silly rule, New York and Washington do not.  Consulates in the US are like Immigration here in Thailand,  little fiefdoms that employees has carved out for themselves.  In many case it is only a local hire employee (non Thai) who has the power 

 

Your cover letter is the only method that has been reported here that will work since few doctors, police departments have a notary sitting around.  Banks do offer notary service but are restricted on what they will notarize as you discovered

 

Add in the newly instituted geographic requirements for each Consulate and the Embassy and you are pretty much stuck with  using the Thai office that covers you home location and cannot "shop" for a more friendly option  

[yamadajr]

Thank you for posting this information. Much appreciated as I am currently assisting my mother in applying for an O/A visa with the L.A. Consulate and running into similar problems with the various notarized documents.


Sent from my iPhone using Thaivisa Connect

[claynlr]

Lee-

Congrats on your success!

 

Can you post a blank "statement of fact" with an added notary clause like you used that was acceptable to the consulate? 

[NCC1701A]

21 hours ago, Lee4Life said:

I just wanted to post this in case it helps someone else out there who has or will run into the same problem.

thanks for posting your info. I am an American and we have a tendency to do everything by the book. Its is nice to have the peace of mind that you got your "Visa" worked out before you came over.

 

But for me, I looked at what I had to do in the States, mailing passport back and forth, criminal background check from LA county sheriff and more, (no problem with that but who wants to talk to the sheriff) I decided against that and just flew over to Thailand and got my extension of stay here. But that was five years ago. 

 

People on this forum are violently divided on this, but if you have 800,000 baht laying around, I would put it in Bangkok Bank. It saves me lots of worry come time to renew my extension and is a good source of in country emergency funds.