Thai citizenship for an adult child

[LocoKwai]

Hello - I am a dual Thai/US citizen, and my son was born in the US and is a US citizen. My wife (his mother) is also a US citizen but not Thai. I am trying to get our son to be a Thai citizen based on my Thai national status. Please note that my son has a Thai birth certificate and a very expired Thai passport from when he was very young; both were issued by the Thai consulate in the US. I believe this was for the initial purpose to travel back to Thailand to register him as a Thai national which we did not do for reasons unknown as it's been over 20 years. Now I have to go through this lengthy process, and I understand that our US marriage certificate needs to be authenticated/certified by the county, state, and federal US governments. Once this is done, I will have to submit the full document to the Royal Thai consulate here in the US for review to get approval as well. Once in Thailand, I need all pertinent documents translated from English to Thai and submit my marriage certificate and translated US passports to the Thai Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) for review and approval. Only then can we start the actual process for him to be a Thai citizen which is another series of steps.
My questions are, do I need to certify my wife's and son’s US passports before submitting to the Thai MFA? If so, then can we do the authentication here in the USA from the Department of State and then certified by the US Thai consulate similar to the marriage certificate, or do we need this done in Thailand by the US embassy in Bangkok? We have already reached out to the US embassy in Bangkok but unfortunately, they gave us a very generic response without any real answers. I am also hearing conflicting information and would like to know if anyone have had similar experience and/or info that can be shared to help with my particular situation. We are all travelling to Thailand later this year and still have some time to finalize and hopefully optimize our timeline. Thank you in advance for your time and attention.

[Khyron]

This is going to be very non specific, but my wife's cousin had been out of Thailand for over 30 years, although he was a Thai citizen by birth.

Passport was long expired, it was last given when he was a child. never got an id card. Mother and Father long deceased. Came back for a new life, not a US citizen.

 

Long story slightly shorter. The next thing to do was to get his family history from the Amphur and have witnesses say that he was born there and that they remember him etc. That took a month or two to get that situated out.

Unfortunately the Amphur decided that the ID card, that he needed to get a drivers license and a new passport and healthcare was "delayed" I think this was 6-7 months until he paid the tea money for it to magically appear.

 

This was 4 years ago, everything is fine now. 

 

Your son had a Thai passport already, so that may smooth things over a bit. You may have to get a family history from the Amphur you were born in, unless you already have one. Wifes birth certificate, marriage certificate and any divorce papers from either one of you will need to be certified and translated. They will possibly need bank statements? 

 

It would possibly behoove you to get an english speaking Thai lawyer to help out, this is a bit of an unusual case, my wifes cousin was the closest thing I could think of.

 

Good luck.

[Maestro]

The OP's son has a Thai birth certificate. Therefore, he needs neither a search of the family history from the district office nor a lawyer.

[Tod Daniels]

Post your question in this Facebook group

Thai Citizenship Group

https://www.facebook.com/groups/thaicitizenship/?ref=share&mibextid=NSMWBT

 

There is no group on the interweb that has more accurate more up-to-date and better answers than the thai citizenship and the people that participate in it

[LukKrueng]

If your son already had a Thai passport that means he is recognised as a Thai citizen. All he needs to do is apply for a new passport. If he wasn't registered in a Thai house book you might have to do that first. I just went through the process for a couple of friends who live overseas. Their children were registered in a central house book, their original passports expired about 6 years earlier. They had to go to the Thai embassy where they live and sign a POA for me to need allowed to take them out of the central house book and put them in mine. Once that was done they went back to the embassy and got the children new passports.

[Etaoin Shrdlu]

I would think that his Thai citizenship has been established by the Thai consulate in the US when they issued the birth certificate and Thai passport.

 

Why do you think that your son's Thai birth certificate and expired Thai passport don't establish his Thai citizenship?

 

Has he tried to get a new Thai passport from the US consulate using the expired one and his birth certificate?

 

 

[LocoKwai]

On 3/10/2025 at 5:31 PM, Tod Daniels said:

Post your question in this Facebook group

Thai Citizenship Group

https://www.facebook.com/groups/thaicitizenship/?ref=share&mibextid=NSMWBT

 

There is no group on the interweb that has more accurate more up-to-date and better answers than the thai citizenship and the people that participate in it

Thank you - I will check into this. Appreciate the recommendation. 

[LocoKwai]

On 3/11/2025 at 12:34 AM, LukKrueng said:

If your son already had a Thai passport that means he is recognised as a Thai citizen. All he needs to do is apply for a new passport. If he wasn't registered in a Thai house book you might have to do that first. I just went through the process for a couple of friends who live overseas. Their children were registered in a central house book, their original passports expired about 6 years earlier. They had to go to the Thai embassy where they live and sign a POA for me to need allowed to take them out of the central house book and put them in mine. Once that was done they went back to the embassy and got the children new passports.

 

Thank you for responding with this info. I really wish it was this streamlined. The difference here is that my son's Thai passport has been expired for over 20 years, so the municipality wants to establish that he is in fact my true son as his picture on that passport was a baby pic. The Thai consulate here in the US also advised that we needed to go to Thailand to accomplish this given the length of time that has passed.

[Ben Zioner]

On 3/10/2025 at 1:49 AM, LocoKwai said:

Hello - I am a dual Thai/US citizen, and my son was born in the US and is a US citizen. My wife (his mother) is also a US citizen but not Thai. I am trying to get our son to be a Thai citizen based on my Thai national status. Please note that my son has a Thai birth certificate and a very expired Thai passport from when he was very young; both were issued by the Thai consulate in the US. I believe this was for the initial purpose to travel back to Thailand to register him as a Thai national which we did not do for reasons unknown as it's been over 20 years. Now I have to go through this lengthy process, and I understand that our US marriage certificate needs to be authenticated/certified by the county, state, and federal US governments. Once this is done, I will have to submit the full document to the Royal Thai consulate here in the US for review to get approval as well. Once in Thailand, I need all pertinent documents translated from English to Thai and submit my marriage certificate and translated US passports to the Thai Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) for review and approval. Only then can we start the actual process for him to be a Thai citizen which is another series of steps.
My questions are, do I need to certify my wife's and son’s US passports before submitting to the Thai MFA? If so, then can we do the authentication here in the USA from the Department of State and then certified by the US Thai consulate similar to the marriage certificate, or do we need this done in Thailand by the US embassy in Bangkok? We have already reached out to the US embassy in Bangkok but unfortunately, they gave us a very generic response without any real answers. I am also hearing conflicting information and would like to know if anyone have had similar experience and/or info that can be shared to help with my particular situation. We are all travelling to Thailand later this year and still have some time to finalize and hopefully optimize our timeline. Thank you in advance for your time and attention.

Why on earth would one do such thing?

 

Way beyond me.

[LocoKwai]

On 3/11/2025 at 1:16 AM, Etaoin Shrdlu said:

I would think that his Thai citizenship has been established by the Thai consulate in the US when they issued the birth certificate and Thai passport.

 

Why do you think that your son's Thai birth certificate and expired Thai passport don't establish his Thai citizenship?

 

Has he tried to get a new Thai passport from the US consulate using the expired one and his birth certificate?

 

 

 

Thank you for your response. The answer I got from the Thai consulate here in the US was that in order to renew his birth certificate, he needs to be in the tabian baan (house registry). He was never in that database so they cannot issue him a new passport. And in order to get him into the house registry, we need to submit documents detailing his education in the States and diplomas/degrees. We also need witnesses to attest that he is our child. Additionally, we also need various documents as mentioned on my initial post (marriage cert, etc). I called Thailand yesterday and spoke with the local municipality as well as BKK. They all said that I need to show up with every document that I think would be relevant to his case. However, none was able to confirm whether I can authenticate the US passports here in the US versus the US embassy in Thailand though.