The Royal Thai Police Immigration Division is being confronted with good quality forged passports and visas and with false supporting documentation with applications to extend non-immigrant visas category ‘B’, the visa required to support a Thai work permit. In an effort to combat these issues, more stringent regulations are being introduced.

The attached is a translation of a notice issued by the Immigration Bureau on 13 Jul 07. It becomes effective on Wed 8 Aug 07.

What it means is that when an application is submitted to Thai Immigration to extend a non-immigrant visa category ‘B’ it must be supported by photocopies of the employing company’s most recent annual financial statement, its registration documentation, its monthly personal income tax return, the company’s corporate tax returns and the company’s monthly Social Security Fund return of contributions. Each of the photocopies must be certified as true copies of the originals by the relevant government departments.

This will entail company staff going to each of the government departments with the original documents plus photocopies of them, taking a number from the department’s number vending machine, then waiting until that number is called. It will be both time-consuming and costly (in terms of employees’ travel and waiting time) and those costs will have to be passed on to companies employing foreigners if they want an agent to do that for them.

On Fri 13 Jul 07, the date the notice was released, the President of the Joint Foreign Chambers of Commerce in Thailand (JFCCT) sent a letter to the Immigration Commissioner requesting a meeting with the Commissioner and his senior staff. It is hoped that Thai Immigration can be convinced to accept sighting the original documents and accepting the photocopies of those originals for.

Please click here to view attached notice