New rules for retirement visa in Chiang Mai

[mesquite]

I reported to CM Immigration today for my yearly renewal of my one year retirement visa. I had an online reservation. At my allotted time, I approached the information desk to let the information lady know I was there. She ushered me to a desk in the back room. I presented the yearly application, along with a letter from the consulate, the required copies of my passport, one photo, and 1900 baht to the immigration officer. Twelve minutes later the immigration officer had completed my application.

I returned to the copy machine people to get the required copies of my passport again, and waited for my number to be called for my multi entry stamp. Usually, that is a short wait but this time it took an hour to complete the process. Total time spent for my yearly visa renewal and multi entry stamp was one hour and twelve minutes. Today was the most painless immigration visit I have had in the last five years. I look forward to the day immigration does away with the nonsensical 90 day reporting, and considers issuing a five or ten year retirement visa. :-)

I doubt if the multi-year visa will ever materialize here in Thailand, at least not in my lifetime. Malaysia has a ten-year (length of the passport) visa and some South/Central American countries offer Permanent Residency to retirees. However, for these visas/PR's, one has to provide a *real* criminal record report from his home country (FBI for the US), and real evidence of a pension. Malaysia's pension requirement is rather high, about 3K USD per month. I can't see Thailand raising the bar that high, and if they did many of us would have to leave.

Edited February 4, 2014 by mesquite

[northernjohn]

Well there certainly has been as lot of interesting posts here. I notice that most of the ones who had good experiences had an online appointment and being as they only handle about 20% of there cases with on line renewals or extensions or what ever you care to call it I was wondering what about the others. I had luck last time I extended it I checked in at 9:30 in the morning and was told to come back at 3:30 in the afternoon.

Total served that day over and above the 10 with an appointment. total with out an appointment was 64. The silent majority.

[daoyai]

Without an appointment just figure a full day dedicated to the task.

[Oscar2]

I went to get a yellow book, recently with my Thai wife, and after being grilled by the head man about "why did we need it ? blah .blah ,blah.

He also asked my wife a lot of personal questions which he didn't need to know .

We decided to proceed and filled in the forms but on the second visit we were told by the girl on the front desk, very clearly, that we should place some money in an envelope with our documentation.

We walked away..........Yes a yellow book is handy but now CM Imm has its act together I can live without it.

that's ridiculous. i've never paid a bribe to anyone in Thailand and never will. i would have walked away too.

[ThaiHerbs]

I completed all my paperwork for my annual retirement extension visa early today so thought I would drop by Immigration (1:30PM) to see if I could get seen. Nope. Miss Curly said come back tomorrow morning at 7AM. The place was really busy including all parking being mostly full. No lines at the photo copy shop tho.

Doug

I showed up at 7AM and was #38 in line. Approx 7:20 the doors opened and we were handed number cards (mine was #38). The number cards were called out and we were handed the appropriate numbered ticket, mine was #21 category 2 (retirement visa extension). I didn't get processed until 11:45 and was given a number for my Multiple Entry/Exit stamp but did not get called until approx 2PM.

In 7AM, out 2:15PM.

Everytime I checked the copy shop was not busy, no line-ups.

Was a bit disappointed at the amount of time it took (been spoiled lately), but cannot fault the staff as they were just extremely busy and seemed very organized. It is peak season and Chiang Mai seems to be booming so next year I will try to book an appointment online 100 days in advance as others have done.

All in all I thought they did a good job considering the number of customers today.

Doug

[delboy]

Another thing to consider when discussing 5 or 10 year visa extensions is how much money Immigration would require applicants to have in the bank. At present they require 800,000 baht so that you have enough funds for one year. Surely, if they were to issue a 5 year extension you would have to have 4 million baht, and for a 10 year extension, 8 million baht. Perhaps they would insist you visit the office once a year to prove that you had 800,000 baht in the bank, which defeats the object of issuing long extensions, anyway.