TM30: The form getting expats in Thailand into a bureaucratic tangle

[Chazar]

I  think all TV member should  club together to buy a camper  van with no permanent address and then a  you tube vlog of driving daily to every province and visit every   immigration bureau on the way.

[Almer]

6 hours ago, GraThai said:

I totally agree that TM30 is an outdated law however I have lived here in Thailand for 30+  years and try to abide by all the rules including this one. Every time I return home from a trip she fills in the form pops into immigration and its done so what is the massive problem...unless of course people have something to hide?????

Nothing to hide but your 'She' pops to  IO with  the form,  in contrast, my 'wife' has a 3 hour round journey and misses 1/2 a days work, government job albeit.

So nothing to hide but you can see that your 'she' is obviously closer than my wife to an IO.

[bluesofa]

Just now, Chazar said:

I  think all TV member should  club together to buy a camper  van with no permanent address and then a  you tube vlog of driving daily to every province and visit every   immigration bureau on the way.

I think my van's camp enough already, I don't need a camper van.

[lkv]

11 minutes ago, kentrot said:

promote higher education for our Thai kids

That's not good at all.

 

Those kids will start moaning about politics in the future, which is a threat to "national security". Their national security, that is, they would like to stay in power if you don't mind. ???? It pays well.

 

Hong Kong and Taiwan can be used as a reference. Mother China is not happy.

Edited August 29, 2019 by lkv

[LivinLOS]

6 hours ago, GraThai said:

I totally agree that TM30 is an outdated law however I have lived here in Thailand for 30+  years and try to abide by all the rules including this one. Every time I return home from a trip she fills in the form pops into immigration and its done so what is the massive problem...unless of course people have something to hide?????

The fact that many of us travel around and return home, sometimes as much as multiple times per week.. Or have multiple homes within Thailand.. Now each of these trips needs a report, and each stay in a non hotel needs another report.. Utterly impractical. 

 

Its not the reporting, its the way in which they wish it to happen. 

[friend of siam]

7 hours ago, 3421abc said:

Great BBC picked up this story. Hopefully other news outlets will report as well. This should be an embarrassment for Thailand if they ever want to be a modern international country this kind of law only going against it.

who say they want to be  a modern international country.?..who ever thought about this bs..? to be a modern int. country...we are thais take it or leave it...modern int. country...what strange falang ideas...pai lai

[Chazar]

1 minute ago, bluesofa said:

I think my van's camp enough already, I don't need a camper van.

self  self  self????

[Jumbo1968]

If I remember years ago when I used to holiday in Europe the hotel used to take a copy of your passport to forward too the local Police ?

[Parsve]

Thailand must be one of the few countries, and the only one I know about, that call it self a democracy that penalizes not the violators but the victims.

 

 

[friend of siam]

6 hours ago, ChipButty said:

I now know a few Thai landlords are not interested in registering their properties so the onus is on the farang to do it but why does the tenant have to do it?

Should crack down on the owners

owner has to report you..if he dont HE receive a 1900 bhat fine...NOT YOU...if u go to samui and rent the ll have to do it ..regardless...if you are a landlord you have to do it for your falang customers...if you come back from trip u have to do it...if u visit your family house upcountry they have to do it....

if you move a lot for work or business every time u stay somewhere these people landlords of different kinds have to do it not you only once u come back home...

if they dont and police check them they receive the fine not you...

 

anyway not so complicate if u want to comply ..once i pay the fine for landlord as he is my friend.and we all did not know...the officer was surprised and say not me the thai has to pay it...

[Expat Tom]

"Don't Cry for Me Thailand", I'm out of here. Farang are just not wanted here anymore so, "Goodbye"!

[rexall]

6 hours ago, GraThai said:

I totally agree that TM30 is an outdated law however I have lived here in Thailand for 30+  years and try to abide by all the rules including this one. Every time I return home from a trip she fills in the form pops into immigration and its done so what is the massive problem...unless of course people have something to hide?????

The relative convenience or inconvenience of filing the TM30 is a red herring. It is irrelevant, and is an unpersuasive argument for repealing the law. It just sounds like a bunch of ungrateful, cry baby foreigners, as usual, criticizing the government and trying to make trouble.  The persuasive argument--to the extent that is even possible--is the issue of FACE. They have to see that in the global community of developed nations (to which Thailand aspires to belong) certain behaviors simply do not meet international standards of decent behavior. This would apply equally to Thai citizens as well as to  the greasy, nasty foreigners who live here. The crucible is, which loss of face is greater; having a bunch of greasy, nasty foreigners meddle in the internal affairs of Thailand, or appearing as a draconian, banana republic to the global community?  There is no indication that I am aware of that anyone in the government actual "gets it" and realizes how oppressive this kind of imposed surveillance is. 

GraThai, I don't know where you are from, but if you were in your home country, how would you feel about being visited by some foreign friends and having to report them to the police the next day?  How would you feel about having to report your comings and goings to the police every time you traveled to a different city?

[DEKEM]

41 minutes ago, SuwadeeS said:

I hope that all foreigner start to complain to their embassies.

Further, as a matter of fact, it is a discrimination of foreigners!!!!!!!!!

Thais never fill any form, when moving around in Thailand.

They are only registered at there blue house book location.

 

It really need to be done something about all these discrimination for foreigners.

I would guess, it will be a good idea when all the foreigners publish and post their negative 

experiences online.

So this country might lose there last tourists and foreigners to Vietnam etc.

don't complain.  just leave.  that is what I plan on doing by the end of the year.  when someone doesn't want you, don't argue with them.  it doesn't do any good.  just leave.

[SpanishExpat]

29 minutes ago, Jumbo1968 said:

As long as the TM30 does not affect the minority of people in Thailand who have control of the majority of the money in Thailand nowt will change.

And it will never affect them. Believe me....TM 30 fines as condo owners are not the the only thing which is waived for them. Once you get to the level of power/control you can do basically EVERYTHING in this country without consequences. 

Edited August 29, 2019 by SpanishExpat

[DEKEM]

3 minutes ago, Expat Tom said:

"Don't Cry for Me Thailand", I'm out of here. Farang are just not wanted here anymore so, "Goodbye"!

I just now made that decision to do so too.  next week, I will get my one year visa to vietnam.  7200 baht.  come and go as you please.  no headache.  my plan is to split my time between the PI and vietnam each year.  with maybe a 2 month stay in thailand at best.

[Globe Trotter]

22 minutes ago, Eligius said:

If only more people had your level of discernment, Globe Trotter (in your superb post above). The sheep will go along with all the constrictions of their liberty - eagerly and encouraging each other to follow suit - to their own doom and destruction - and will say to us who question what is being implemented world-wide: 'If you've done nothing wrong, you've got nothing to fear'. As the great Aldous Huxley stated: People will be trained 'to love their servitude'. That slavish, masochistic mentality is here - alive and well - or rather, sick and abysmally pathetic.

 

May God preserve us all !

The thing is though, there will not be an outcry or a revolt because the generations that are young now, and the ones that are not yet even born, will not know much different. For example kids 10 yers old or under today, don't know of a world without smartphones or social media. To them having one with them all of the time is natural. When it does eventually come to a point where there is tech inside of people, the younger generations then will again know no different. By that time though, Ai will have probably gotten to a crazy level of itnellegiance, and the tech will be integrated into the human mind. This is the ultimate form of control that has been the plan all along. Elon Musk of all people, has said that this is the only logical solution, to evolve and integrate with the Ai into the future, an outlook I certainly do not share. 

It's a lot like the internet, the internet was invented by a division of the military known as Arpa. The internet had to be sold to the masses as an essential part of life, and in the early stages it was essentially a free for all, totally open. But of course it has become more and more controlled, and is now a fundamental tool in the mass surveillance that we are seeing and living. 

[zydeco]

This is going to cause a lot of selling in the condo market. I wonder if that is their plan? To crash the market and reduce housing prices. It has been said before, but it's worth thinking about again: perhaps a lot of this is due to airbnb condo owners running what amounts to illegal hotels for Chinese and Indians.

[ThaiFelix]

6 hours ago, GraThai said:

I totally agree that TM30 is an outdated law however I have lived here in Thailand for 30+  years and try to abide by all the rules including this one. Every time I return home from a trip she fills in the form pops into immigration and its done so what is the massive problem...unless of course people have something to hide?????

Your just popping it into immigration for me is a 1 1/2 hour drive one way let alone the standing around in the IO waiting to get served every time we go into the next province for shopping each month.  Then add the same trip every time we need to do a 90 day report.  What a lot of people on here dont understand when they say "whats the massive problem?" is that some IO's are not close by, In addition some IO's wont accept TM30's or 90 day reports by mail.  They tell us we have to attend the office.  The same goes with online.  You can only do TM30's or 90 day reports IF your IO accepts them online, our IO doesn't.  So its not so easy as you say and no we have nothing to hide!

 

I am retired so not as bad as some of these poor buggers who work and must take a Monday off work to attend to their TM30 needs because they wanted to go away for the weekend.

[rexall]

6 hours ago, MaxLee said:

Well, I live in my dad's house, who is a retired Thai National, but now he is in Germany and he cannot fill out the TM 30. I just recently renewed my Non immigrant B visa

 

Now my dad is not in Thailand to register me via TM 30,

 

What do I do now, hahahaha???

I don't know the exact procedure or what the proper name is, but you get "power of attorney"  from your dad to file the TM30 in absence on his behalf.  Depending on how strictly your Imm office regards the TM30, you may get fined the 2,000 even if the failure to file is not your fault.  Sorry to be the one to tell you.

[kevinmartyn]

The "TM 30" form is not difficult to complete. What is making me smile is that the onwers of condo's, house's, etc are required to report who is staying their. BUT it's the "foreigners" who gets to pay the fine or should i say the "petrol" money. As a foreign in Thailand we just have to accept! Yeah it's annoying but as foreigners we are not going to get the strange "Law" changed! Saying that the United Kingdom still has strange laws and one is if you have less than 2 shillings and six pence in your pocket you are a vagrant! 

[Oliver Holzerfilled]

7 hours ago, GraThai said:

I totally agree that TM30 is an outdated law however I have lived here in Thailand for 30+  years and try to abide by all the rules including this one. Every time I return home from a trip she fills in the form pops into immigration and its done so what is the massive problem...unless of course people have something to hide?????

 

3 hours ago, TooSweaty said:

30+ years of kowtowing and obedience. Congratulations, that’s quite an accomplishment. Maybe you’ll be given some sort of a Good Farang award.

 

”She” should also get something for doing everything for you and making your life so easy that in comparison it makes everyone else look like they are hiding something.
 

“She” sounds like a keeper.

I bet she controls his bank account as well.  Ignorance is bliss.

[Gumballl]

1 hour ago, puchooay said:

You cannot be fined for a hotel not reporting you. If you stayed at many but only one reported, how would immigration know anyway?

 

It is only your responsibility to ensure the TM30 is filed upon your return to your registered address.

Say for example, a person stays at 3 different hotels over a 10 day period, and only the first hotel registered the TM30. When the falang returns home to file the TM30 to indicate they have returned home, the computer system will indicate that they are multiple days late in doing so... hence a fine!

[Jumbo1968]

Condo owners and people who rent rooms out in some case want too stay below the radar avoiding the need too pay tax therefore won’t do a TM30.

Edited August 29, 2019 by Jumbo1968
More info.

[ThaiFelix]

2 minutes ago, Globe Trotter said:

The thing is though, there will not be an outcry or a revolt because the generations that are young now, and the ones that are not yet even born, will not know much different. For example kids 10 yers old or under today, don't know of a world without smartphones or social media. To them having one with them all of the time is natural. When it does eventually come to a point where there is tech inside of people, the younger generations then will again know no different. By that time though, Ai will have probably gotten to a crazy level of itnellegiance, and the tech will be integrated into the human mind. This is the ultimate form of control that has been the plan all along. Elon Musk of all people, has said that this is the only logical solution, to evolve and integrate with the Ai into the future, an outlook I certainly do not share. 

It's a lot like the internet, the internet was invented by a division of the military known as Arpa. The internet had to be sold to the masses as an essential part of life, and in the early stages it was essentially a free for all, totally open. But of course it has become more and more controlled, and is now a fundamental tool in the mass surveillance that we are seeing and living. 

Totally agree.  From what I have read it is not Thailand doing this freely but under pressure from "Big Brother" to track people.  Think about it......not everybody has facebook!

[losworld]

What is in order is reciprocity.  When the wealthy Thais go to America or England or France or whatever to shop and holiday let's have them report to immigration every time they change hotels. I encourage all to contact their government officials and get the ball rolling.

Edited August 29, 2019 by losworld

[Phuket Pete]

Common Sense is not Common here. Stupidity is standard.

Thailand is slowly killing itself through corruption, ignorance and greed. 

Thailand is a business that relies on overseas visitors, but the uneducated idiots in authority here refuse point blank to listen to the needs of it's customers. Any business that doesn't do that fails. That's why Falang not come now and go elsewhere !

Edited August 29, 2019 by Phuket Pete

[Parsve]

5 hours ago, Sheryl said:

Incidentally the relevant section of the law (Immigration Act) is as follows (bold face mine):

 

"The householder, the owner or possessor of a dwelling place, or a hotel manager, who takes in, as a resident, an alien with permission to temporarily stay in the Kingdom,  shall notify the competent official at the immigration office located in the locality in which the house, dwelling place or hotel is located within twenty four hours from the time the alien has taken residence".

 

Now  my reading of this is that a new report needs only to be made if you are newly taking up residence.  If, after reporting your residence at a private house, condo or apartment when you moved in (and again every year when you extend your permission to stay) you continue to reside there permanently (you still pay rent/have a lease or own the place; still pay utilities etc; still have your belongings there etc, you intend to return and it is still your primary place of residence)  then to my reading the law does nto mandate that people to re-notify immigration just because they visited someplace else overnight.

 

I can see requiring hotels etc to report all  guests, the hotel has no way of knowing if you have a permanent residence elsewhere etc. But people on 1 year extensions of stay who have established a long term residence (as most have) that they continue to maintain, should not be required to report every time they come back to it after spending a night away from home. It is absurd, accomplishes nothing and the wording of the law does not require it.

 

 

Well how you read it, even if you read it right, have no substance. The reality is how IO interpret it and that not looks to be the same. 

[Mason45]

If a person were to own a condo in his name and was registered at the Immigration office how would he get nabbed for not filing in a form if he visited his wifes' family up north for several weeks at a time.

[kevinmartyn]

The "TM 30" form is not difficult to complete. What is making me smile is that the onwers of condo's, house's, etc are required to report who is staying their. BUT it's the "foreigners" who gets to pay the fine or should i say the "petrol" money. As a foreign in Thailand we just have to accept! Yeah it's annoying but as foreigners we are not going to get the strange "Law" changed! Saying that the United Kingdom still has strange laws and one is if you have less than 2 shillings and six pence in your pocket you are a vagrant! 

 

Just as a matter of self interest and the Thai Government slogan of "Good people in and Bad out" How many bad have been found????????????

[from the home of CC]

one thing is for sure, the tm 30 has been a true money maker for the nation group - thousands of postings with more threads to come lol..

Edited August 29, 2019 by from the home of CC