I am preparing to petition for my wife to get an immigrant visa (green card) to the U.S.  She is Thai but has never had a birth certificate. She does have a Thai ID card, blue house book, and a passport. The U.S. embassy web site has the following info:

 

If an official birth certificate is not obtainable, applicants should submit a Certificate of Birthplace, their Household Registration, and their Thai National ID card as secondary evidence.

 

However, there is no official information anywhere that I can find explaining exactly what a Certificate of Birthplace is and where it can be obtained. I have found a few threads on this site where alternates to birth certificates were discussed but none were very recent. I assume we need to go to the Amphur where my wife was born north of Chiang Mai but I suspect they will not understand what we are asking for. Does anyone know specifically what this document is called in Thai? Will we need witnesses? Hearing about any experiences or any suggestions would be much appreciated.

In Isaan it was birth certificate. My wife got hers from the local office.

 

She is a US citizen now

It will likely involve lawyer getting paperwork from those in family/those who knew her and having it reviewed by local officials to say she was born there.  It is not a DIY project as far as I know but is something that can be done as many Thai, even if they had certificates, have lost them and storage used to be local with no central registry as now so many were lost to vermin and fire.

 

Does she know what was used to obtain ID card?  

As previous poster said, her local Amphur will provide it.

 

When we did my wifes CR-1 she's lost her birth certificate somewhere along the way, but an easy fix at the local Amphur office

Was she born in a hospital? Does a village elder remember when she was born?

This is not a case of a birth certificate being lost. My wife's birth was never registered as she was born at home in a village north of Chiang Mai years before registration was normal. Thus no birth certificate exists and we need the "Certificate of Birthplace" as I mentioned in the OP.  My question was what exactly is this document? The only place I've ever seen it mentioned is on the US government website (see OP). It gives no details as to what the document might be.

My wife and my stepdaughter (college grad) visited the Amphur for my wife's birthplace yesterday and even though the people there tried to be helpful they were not aware of exactly what this document would be. They did mange to pick up official copies of my stepdaughter's and stepson's birth certificates while they were there.

 

So my current guess as to what the US calls a "Certificate of Birthplace" is some sort of affidavit from her Amphur that attests to her birthplace and birthdate plus is witnessed and has an official seal on it. What would be nice is a template for such a document that we could give them. Either that or the official Thai name for such a document.

 

My wife acquired her Thai ID card about 15 years ago with the assistance of her Pu Yai Baan. He died a few years ago but the new Pu Yai Baan knows my wife, her children, and their history and would probably be willing to help.

 

My wife just found a one page document in her files with an official red stamp that she was given when she got her Thai ID Card. Even though it is in Thai I can see her birth date and also the names of her parents in the top half of this document and it has her picture on the bottom half. We will get this translated to English so I can tell if it will be useful.