Video: TM30: Thailand’s controversial immigration laws and their consequences - FCCT event

[Kleepanna]

Has anyone heard how this impacts the casual tourists I asking I will arrive in 2 weeks 10 day stay in BKK but with  friends they have a condo?  Do i need to do a TM30 if i never leave BKK b(the condo) or would it be best to saty in a hotel and save my friends the hassel?

[IvorBiggun2]

1 hour ago, DrTuner said:

Except the hotel is required to do the TM30 for any aliens, regardless who used the ID to check in.

It's the hotels problem if caught and they are the rules. Not my plomplem. I never get asked for my ID upon entering into an hotel when the missus books in. Up to others if they decide to make the hotel report their stay.

[IvorBiggun2]

2 minutes ago, Kleepanna said:

Has anyone heard how this impacts the casual tourists I asking I will arrive in 2 weeks 10 day stay in BKK but with  friends they have a condo?  Do i need to do a TM30 if i never leave BKK b(the condo) or would it be best to saty in a hotel and save my friends the hassel?

Go stay in your friends condo. Don't report. In 10 days you fly out. I doubt very much you or they will get any trouble. 

[DrTuner]

11 minutes ago, IvorBiggun2 said:

It's the hotels problem if caught and they are the rules. Not my plomplem. I never get asked for my ID upon entering into an hotel when the missus books in. Up to others if they decide to make the hotel report their stay.

Yeah, I'm Alright Jack. Until I'm not. The spirit of Thailaaan.

[KhaoYai]

2 hours ago, the guest said:

When all the foreigners have left the country, what excuse will you give then ?

So many times I've seen this kind of comment. When the changes to income requirements were made............everyone's leaving. Now TM30.................everyone's leaving.

 

According to a report I read on this website recently - the number of expats is actually growing.

 

(No, I'm not going to find the source of those figures - you can either accept it, claim I'm lying or search yourself)

 

In my opinion, its more likely that people who do decide to leave Thailand, do so due to the poor exchange rate than over TM30.

Edited August 19, 2019 by KhaoYai

[bluepeter]

On 8/17/2019 at 3:06 PM, Andrew Dwyer said:

Are you sure you can upload only two scans for registration ??
I uploaded 3 ( gf’s ID, first page of TB, second page of TB ) I received the email accepting the registration but not the username and password ( 2 weeks ago ).

Of course it’s probably irrelevant as my IO ( Ayutthaya ) don’t even do 90 day online so the chances of them doing TM 30 online are minimal.

The original online registration allowed unlimited uploads but now only two

[Brigand]

The way I see it is that you'll only get caught out if leave the country and come back and fail to do one, like on a re-entry permit, or go to some expensive hotel that actually fills out a TM30 when you book in. It seems that if you move around the same province and not leave then you don't have to do it. Personally, if I was going out of province then I'd just stay at the normal sort of lodgings/apartment block that are unlikely to fill in a TM30 or just don't care about it ... they (immigration) will never know. It reminds me of the laws on buying alcohol, yeah, you can't buy from 7-11/Tesco/malls etc. at the wrong time but the other shops couldn't care less and no-one knows any better.

Edited August 19, 2019 by Brigand
Typos

[watcharacters]

On 8/16/2019 at 3:31 PM, gk10002000 said:

Electronic monitoring is just a step away.  Did you buy and register a Thai SIM card?  If so, it is trivial for them to be able to figure out what cell tower and consequently where your phone is located.  Of course that does not mean that you are where your phone is

It's a fact the police can find a person with just the sim card number.

Doesn't matter if the phone is  turned on or not.

 

[gk10002000]

20 minutes ago, watcharacters said:

It's a fact the police can find a person with just the sim card number.

Doesn't matter if the phone is  turned on or not.

 

They may find the address the person submitted when they purchased the SIM, but that does not mean the person is there.  If the person is walking about with their phone turned off, most phones with very few exceptions are dead to the world.  That is what turned off means

[CLTH]

On 8/17/2019 at 9:15 AM, jackdd said:

Then there is Chris Larkin, who just seems to have no idea about a variety of topics, but likes to talk a lot.

He suggests a stricter vetting procedure, to allow people to stay longer in Thailand. At this point i wondered if he ever heard of permanent residency, because this is exactly that.

Then he says that Thailand has a working registration, and foreigners could be part of this as well. Foreigners can be part of it (yellow book), but this system isn't working at all. If somebody would make a statistic about the percentage of people who live where they are registered this is probably way less than 50 percent, doesn't he know such basic things?

At 1:26:50 Sebastian actually brings up an interesting question for the IO, but instead of letting the IO answer, Chris Larking jumps in and helps the IO to avoid this critical question.

 

The immigration officers... i wonder if immigration just wants to troll. They send immigration officers who can't really speak english, to take part in a panel hold in english. They didn't even understand half of the questions. And many other questions were simply left unanswered, because can't lose face.

Why did nobody jump in and translated the questions for them?

PR isn't available to everyone so there has to be a better mechanism than the TM30, which in and of itself does nothing to prove your bonafides.

 

If you'd bothered to watch the whole thing, you'd see I did strongly recommend that people apply for PR and citizenship, two issues which I actually do know alot about.

 

As for helping the IO avoid questions, lets just say it was an effort in crowd control. At various points, it was getting overly hostile, and if you knew anything you'd know that isn't the way to go about convincing the people who need to be convinced. Not to say my point was invalid. The Thai government has done well in opening up PR applications early this year (as it has done since the coup) and citizenship applications have been processed as fast as they ever have. Smart Visas are also a great initiative by this government.

 

As for the analysis of certain categories of visa holder not having to go through the TM30 process. You are spot on, Immigration did actually say this (but after the filmed Q&A) at other forums. BOI visa holders aren't being asked for the TM 30 and Non-immigrant B holders and their dependents who get extensions of stay at Chaengwattana at the desk which handles non-immigrant B visas will not be asked for it either. I was told this twice in the same day at two seminars I attended that day.

[zydeco]

2 minutes ago, CLTH said:

As for helping the IO avoid questions, lets just say it was an effort in crowd control. At various points, it was getting overly hostile, and if you knew anything you'd know that isn't the way to go about convincing the people who need to be convinced.

So you are the person concerned. Did someone appoint you as moderator of the event? I would like to know, because the question being asked by the lawyer was probably the single most important question to be asked all night long. And you enabled immigration to avoid it. Thanks a lot.

[CLTH]

3 minutes ago, zydeco said:

So you are the person concerned. Did someone appoint you as moderator of the event? I would like to know, because the question being asked by the lawyer was probably the single most important question to be asked all night long. And you enabled immigration to avoid it. Thanks a lot.

No, there was a moderator, and he could have asked the question again. I was there. It wasn't happening and the conversation was getting rowdy and unproductive.

 

It was a policy question and if you think he was going to answer it, then I've got a bridge over Sydney Harbour I'd like to sell you.

Edited August 20, 2019 by CLTH

[zydeco]

4 minutes ago, CLTH said:

It was a policy question and if you think he was going to answer it, then I've got a bridge over Sydney Harbour I'd like to sell you.

Well, we'll never know, now, will we, as you decided to run the conversation to your liking, instead of what I bet 99 percent of us wanted to hear.

Edited August 20, 2019 by zydeco

[CLTH]

Just now, zydeco said:

Well, we'll never know, now, will we, as you decided to run the conversation to your likeing, instead of what I bet 99 percent of us wanted to hear.

I've worked here 20 years dealing with the government. It wasn't going to happen. Maybe in private, but there is no way he was going to throw his superiors under the bus in a public forum. Their English wasn't great, but they aren't stupid and understood all the issues. Underestimating the officials is something which too many people on this site easily fall into the habit of thinking. 

[zydeco]

6 minutes ago, CLTH said:

Underestimating the officials is something which too many people on this site easily fall into the habit of thinking. 

I don't think I or many of the others posting underestimate them. I've worked for Thai institutions and know how decisions are made. Meetings are held only to announce the consensus already arrived at informally beforehand. As for the general, there were several tipoffs that we were going to get a stonewall from the beginning. He arrived late and once there didn't seem happy at all, an attitude that only deepened as things moved along. And at the end, he made it clear that he had already visited with the Chinese a month ago and the Indians a week prior. Westerners were all grouped together (despite different nationalities having different issues on such things as income letters) and put at the bottom of the totempole. Trust me. Message received. Still, the issues remained: why arbitrary enforcement of laws at the national and local level? And add on a mountain of paperwork to an already understaffed and overworked bureau?

[jackdd]

16 minutes ago, CLTH said:

PR isn't available to everyone so there has to be a better mechanism than the TM30, which in and of itself does nothing to prove your bonafides.

I agree that the TM30 is over the top and if somebody wants to do anything illegal he would avoid it anyway

But instead of asking for some new vetting procedures, you should just ask to open PR to more people. For example i don't see any reason why Thailand should not allow a retiree, who has been in the country for let's say 5 years and who has a state pension for the rest of his life, to get PR.

 

24 minutes ago, CLTH said:

Smart Visas are also a great initiative by this government.

Smart Visas are more like a total fail.

The person who has it (and his family), does not have to go to the immigration office once a year, that's about the whole advantage compared to a non-b visa. (90 day reports and the work permit are handled by companies who employ people with 200k+ salary anyway, so this doesn't change anything for the holder of the visa)

For this little advantage they probably spent thousands of hours in meetings, had to setup new processes, new offices etc.

I would call the Smart Visas another case of wasted tax payer money.

 

34 minutes ago, CLTH said:

As for the analysis of certain categories of visa holder not having to go through the TM30 process. You are spot on, Immigration did actually say this (but after the filmed Q&A) at other forums. BOI visa holders aren't being asked for the TM 30 and Non-immigrant B holders and their dependents who get extensions of stay at Chaengwattana at the desk which handles non-immigrant B visas will not be asked for it either. I was told this twice in the same day at two seminars I attended that day.

That's actually not what i said, you should read it again (and you should also read the law, while you are already at it), i said certain categories are exempt from TM28 (section 37 (3) and (4) in the immigration act), because different people brought this up, even though it has nothing to do with TM30

TM30 does not have any exemptions, it applies to everybody who is a temporary visitor in Thailand. Immigration just currently does not enforce it for BOI visa holders, but this is actually not in accordance with the law and they could start enforcing it any day. People will know about it once they get fined for it, and then they will be told by the IO: This has always been the law, you should have known about it.

[CLTH]

4 hours ago, jackdd said:

I agree that the TM30 is over the top and if somebody wants to do anything illegal he would avoid it anyway

But instead of asking for some new vetting procedures, you should just ask to open PR to more people. For example i don't see any reason why Thailand should not allow a retiree, who has been in the country for let's say 5 years and who has a state pension for the rest of his life, to get PR.

 

Smart Visas are more like a total fail.

The person who has it (and his family), does not have to go to the immigration office once a year, that's about the whole advantage compared to a non-b visa. (90 day reports and the work permit are handled by companies who employ people with 200k+ salary anyway, so this doesn't change anything for the holder of the visa)

For this little advantage they probably spent thousands of hours in meetings, had to setup new processes, new offices etc.

I would call the Smart Visas another case of wasted tax payer money.

 

That's actually not what i said, you should read it again (and you should also read the law, while you are already at it), i said certain categories are exempt from TM28 (section 37 (3) and (4) in the immigration act), because different people brought this up, even though it has nothing to do with TM30

TM30 does not have any exemptions, it applies to everybody who is a temporary visitor in Thailand. Immigration just currently does not enforce it for BOI visa holders, but this is actually not in accordance with the law and they could start enforcing it any day. People will know about it once they get fined for it, and then they will be told by the IO: This has always been the law, you should have known about it.

To your points: 

 

- basically every submission done by the major western chambers, every discussion we have (and my last was with senior security, army and police at government house) all talk about making PR and citizenship easier to get and to extend it on a humanitarian basis to those who have been married to Thai citizens. There is a whole matrix of issues we address, ID cards, more modern work permits, longer work permits and work rights for spouses amongst other things. 

 

 

Pragmatically, you won’t see retirees be given a path to PR. Very few countries do and it probably won’t fly.

 

My comments on the night were shortened as, if you were watching it, I was given a short amount of time given the immigration people were late, to speak in more depth about what the members of major chambers thought about it, and what we have proposed to government. So I went where the conversation was heading. 

 

- the smart visa i probably one of the more innovative developments in the past 20 years here. It isn’t perfect and it’s first iteration attracted limited amounts of people. The BOI revised it and I know of people who are now being able to apply for 2 year S visas based on a solid business plans and showing adequate finds (50,000 per month). The whole idea is to attract people to set up a company in Thailand, so of course you want them to. Advising these people on the process and seeing it in action, it is only marginally more complicated that when I set up my own firm here. It wasn’t that hard and they did it themselves with limited assistance from an accountant. 

 

Cause we view these things in context, and not through he myopic lense of the crowd that night, government deserves kudos on this front and for the fact that PR applications are now open for 7 months this year, not the normal 2 weeks in December. I made a big point that people should take advantage of this if eligible. 

 

- you are correct. I misread, but am aware of the difference. At our function earlier in the day, immigration made your point.

 

However, and I stress, the issue of TM30 exemptions was drilled in upon. Immigration, to the face of the head of HR of central group no less, said what I have. It may not be in the law, but the explanation given was that the place of work, contained on the work permit was a reportable address and they were happy with that. A fudge? Probably but despite appearances to the contrary, they looking for work around as to the orders they have been given.

 

Same goes for tenants with three year leases being able to register for the online system instead of landlords. Not in law, but a workaround for them to make it easier for tenants. 

 

As for the Chinese and Indians coming first. They were simply out of the blocks first and organised their meetings first. I dare say there are a few land holders amongst them, and landlords are just as up in arms about it. The Australians had no trouble getting the immigration people to come along - so I’m not sure about your totem pole analogy. 

Edited August 20, 2019 by CLTH

[TKDfella]

6 hours ago, CLTH said:

I've worked here 20 years dealing with the government. It wasn't going to happen. Maybe in private, but there is no way he was going to throw his superiors under the bus in a public forum. Their English wasn't great, but they aren't stupid and understood all the issues. Underestimating the officials is something which too many people on this site easily fall into the habit of thinking. 

Well, if you are good psychoanalyzing the government as you are the expats on this forum then all I can say that is you've wasted your time. As I have posted on another similar thread I attended IO arranged meetings with other expats at Nongkhai and in a couple of hours we all got the message. If you think this TM30 meeting was to called because the 'petition' was effective then you are mistaken. No the IO's aren't stupid and they probably agreed to a meeting because they wanted it and not because you did.

[DLock]

21 hours ago, watcharacters said:

It's a fact the police can find a person with just the sim card number.

Doesn't matter if the phone is  turned on or not.

 

 

What are you talking about?

 

If your phone is off, it stops communicating with the cell towers and can only be traced to the cell tower you powered your phone down...or when you turn it back on again....and you could literally be on the other side of the planet.

 

 

[ThomasThBKK]

20 hours ago, CLTH said:

- the smart visa i probably one of the more innovative developments in the past 20 years here. It isn’t perfect and it’s first iteration attracted limited amounts of people. The BOI revised it and I know of people who are now being able to apply for 2 year S visas based on a solid business plans and showing adequate finds (50,000 per month). The whole idea is to attract people to set up a company in Thailand, so of course you want them to. Advising these people on the process and seeing it in action, it is only marginally more complicated that when I set up my own firm here. It wasn’t that hard and they did it themselves with limited assistance from an accountant. 

 

These visas are so extremely limited, i have a good amount of investments in thai companies that would monetary be enough but none of these companies is "government approved" aka didn't give tmoney to someone, simply because they don't need to deal with this rubbish.

 

Quote

1.2 Directly investing as an individual investor for a total amount of at least 5 million Baht in a startup or an incubation or accelerator program endorsed by relevant agencies.

 

Do you think companies want to deal with this kind of stuff? They have their business to run. 

 

Then the whole field is totally limited: 

 

Quote

• Next-Generation Automotive
• Smart Electronics
• Affluent, Medical and Wellness Tourism
• Agriculture and Biotechnology
• Food for the Future
• Automation and Robotics
• Aviation and Logistics
• Biofuels and Biochemicals
• Digital
• Medical Hub
• Alternative Dispute Resolution
• Human Resource Development in Science and Technology
• Environmental Management and Renewable Energy

 

I have for example education investments, but those don't count because apparently Thailand doesn't need better education.

Do we qualify as digital because we have an education app too? Lawyers have yet to find out lol.

 

Then there are arbitrary limitations like 

Quote

The investor can invest in more than 1 business but must maintain the investment throughout the validity period of Smart Visa.

So if one startup goes bankrupt, i lose my visa and get kicked out? OH yeah great.... What happens if they sell out to a foreign company, i get shares in the foreign company instead or even a thai company that's not government approved? I lose my visa? 

 

The same crocked up non sense with the 10 mio THB investment visa, which only applies to new build condos or government appraised projects.

So you want to build your own resort or other type of business related building/infrastructure and it doesn't apply even tho you create work places for thais - facepalm.

Oh and you are not allowed to ever get a work permit with that one, not beeing able to get a work permit as an INVESTOR is kinda, hilarious?

 

This is literally the most business unfriendly country i've put my foot in, no such rubbish in korea, japan,singapore, malaysia, mauritius and co.

 

It's really easier to buy an elite visa and don't give thailand any money besides that, invest in thailands competition outside of thailand instead.

It's hilarious, they are so anti foreigner and so arrogant, they want money money money but are not willing to give anything in return.

 

 

Rant over -.- but i totally agree with @jackdd , this smart visa stuff is just another wasted opportunity and there's really nothing good in getting one

[DrTuner]

15 minutes ago, ThomasThBKK said:

It's really easier to buy an elite visa and don't give thailand any money besides that, invest in thailands competition outside of thailand instead.

That's a good strategy. If one must stay in Thailand, then the tax rules, decent weather in some parts and it's geographical location are the few benefits it has. Although that means living somewhere with fast access to airport and that would be Bangkok, a crappy place to live in. Or suffer the hours long transit rides in mad max traffic.

Edited August 21, 2019 by DrTuner

[trainman34014]

Went for my annual Marriage Extension this morning and the first thing the Female Officer did was look for the copy of my TM30 above all else.    Five years ago it was unthought of but now they know it's a cash cow and are eager to extract fines for non-compliance !

[WalkingOrders]

On 8/19/2019 at 5:34 AM, KhaoYai said:

but the whole point of having an international language is so that we can all communicate.

I am sure the French would agree... in fact I just read that because of population increases in Africa that French may be the most spoken language in the world pretty soon. Time to brush up oui?

[elviajero]

40 minutes ago, WalkingOrders said:

I am sure the French would agree... in fact I just read that because of population increases in Africa that French may be the most spoken language in the world pretty soon. Time to brush up oui?

Non! Not a chance. 

 

And regardless of which language is the most spoken, English is, and will remain, the world’s lingua franca.

[Tomahawk21]

On 8/19/2019 at 9:25 AM, davidst01 said:

if you have a yellow book then no

what if have a blue book ?

[IvorBiggun2]

On ‎8‎/‎21‎/‎2019 at 1:37 PM, trainman34014 said:

Five years ago it was unthought of but now they know it's a cash cow and are eager to extract fines for non-compliance !

How much? Did you get a receipt as required?

Edited August 27, 2019 by IvorBiggun2

[trainman34014]

1 minute ago, IvorBiggun2 said:

Did you get a receipt as required?

Wasn't me who got fined !