Renewing a Retirement Visa
I renewed my 1 year Non-Immigrant (Retirement) Visa today. This was my first time to renew it since some new rules took effect January 1, 2019. What usually took me 4-5 hours in the past took 9 hours this time. I arrived at the Chang Wattana, Bangkok, Immigration location at 9 AM, 30 minutes after they opened at 8:30 AM and did not walk out with my new visa stamp in my passport until about 6 PM. And even then I feel like the Immigration Officer and her 2-3 assistants were hustling it through in the last minutes just to get it done and close shop. Yeah, they will keep going until they've processed everyone, accepted or not. There were hundreds of people there at 9 AM. When I left about 6 PM, there were only 3-4 people still sitting with Immigration Officers in the cubicles.
I can't really say what the hold up was since I showed up with all the documents I'd seen online as necessary, all filled out with supporting financial documents included. One thing I always found to be true was as true this time; you will never know exactly what you need to show, which forms to be filled out and so on, until the Immigration Officer wielding the inked up stamp TELLS you what you need. Reading about it online on the various sites is helpful. But they won't tell you the full story. Be prepared to fill out 2-3 additional and unmentioned forms repeating what you'd already filled out before.
Of course, filling out that stuff, the new stuff, does not take very long. Waiting for your queue ticket number to be called is what takes long. I suppose next year I will be sure to show up about an hour before they open. I wanted to do that this time but had a girl stay over last night and, well, that screwed up my plan for an earlier exit from the apartment. But I'd shown up during the 12 Noon lunch break in the past and still got out before 4 PM. This time they seemed inordinately concerned about me putting in a 90 Day Report on where I lived (using a different form than I'd ever used before). I don't remember that being such a big deal in the past. My next 90 Day Report was not officially due until May 31 and I always do that with ease by mail. But the first Officer I finally saw in her cubicle about 1:30 PM today instructed me to go to get this and that photo copied downstairs and then go to Counter B to submit my 90 Day Report now.
Possible Helpful Tip: Sometime an hour or so before it looks like your first queue ticket will be called, go to the queue ticket desk again and ask for a queue ticket for Counter B. Get a jump on it even if you don't need to go through the 90 Day Report process on that day. If you don't need that queue ticket then you really lucked out, just throw it away. Or give it to someone who looks like they need it. Someone with kids in tow. But waiting for the Officers at Counter B to handle all the 90 Day Reporters took a whopping 3 1/2 hours! That was after waiting 4 hours to be told by the first Officer I spoke with to tell me I needed to go to Counter B for a 90 Day Report. And at that point, I still had my passport in my hand without a new visa stamp in it.
I was then supposed to go back to the original waiting area and wait for them to call my original queue ticket number. Yeah, that means they were WAY past my original number by then and it was entirely up to the good will and keen memory of the Immigration Officer who told me to go through the 90 Day Reporting processes to see me, remember I was the guy she sent over there half a day ago and, oh, ok she'll take me now just as soon as she gets through these next couple dozen applicants. You get the picture. Next year I will be sure to pick up a queue ticket for Counter B long before I am actually told I need one. And if I am not told to do it, I'll throw it away or hand it to some cute applicant who looks like she needs to get through that particular process faster than the next 3-4 hours.
Anyway, a few notes on the new rules:
I use the monthly streaming income method; showing a minimum of 65,000 baht per month, each and every month for the previous 12 months, going into my Thai bank account, and all from Foreign Transfers. I had a print out of all transactions for the past 12 months (cost 200 baht at Bangkok Bank). Each of the Foreign Transfer I highlighted and with a total amount of baht transferred for each month to make it easy for the Immigration Officers to see it at a glance. As it turned out, I missed that 65,000 baht minimum in Foreign Transfers one month in the past year. I had made a transfer on the 30th of the previous month, thinking it would land in my account on the 1st of the next month, but damned if it didn't land there on the 31st of the month. That meant I had a much larger Foreign Transfer in the previous month and came up short by, get this, 228 baht the next month! Yeah, I could only show 64,772 baht in Foreign Transfers for one of those 12 previous months. Well, either nobody noticed or they really didn't care about one month being off by so little. Everything was good.
I had also heard that rental income was not being accepted as a legitimate source of income. I can't really confirm or deny it based on my situation. But I will say that the supporting documents I showed was a small monthly pension (not enough to cover that 65,000 baht per month), my IRA savings account and some rental income reports. I gave all of it to the Immigration Officer and got my visa stamp. So I can't really say if they combined my typical IRA withdrawals and my pension to come up with what they needed to see or if they actually did include the rental income with my small pension to come up with it. Any combination of two of those sources would be plenty to show as an ongoing income stream greater than the minimum required. It was too complicated to ask and I was in no mood to conduct a survey. And it didn't really matter to me how they came up with it anyway. I have not started to collect my Social Security and that alone would be enough to cover the 65,000 baht per month income stream. But, until then, it looks like they were fine with combining my too small pension with one or both of the other sources of income (IRA and/or rental income) to approve me for the income requirement.
At one point before I was given back my passport with the new visa stamp in it, one of the Immigration Officers, a kind of cute little lady, handed me a blank sheet of paper and told me to draw a map of my apartment location. WTF? I'd never had to do that before. Never heard of it. Anybody else? Well, I just drew some lines and labeled them Sukhumvit Road, Asok, etc. And then a line for my soi and the approximate location of my apartment with an X. She was fine with that. Hey, whatever.
There was also a special meeting with me and one of the Immigration Officers involved in the newly highly important 90 Day Reporting process where I was told that, since my apartment manager failed to submit the information about my residence in his building in a timely manner after I'd moved in there about 5 years ago, either he or I needed to pay an 800 baht fine this very day. Of course, I paid that myself. Again, never heard of that one before. And then there was this; that same Immigration Officer told me when I leave Thailand for another country, say a 5 day holiday in the Philippines, I needed to RETURN to Immigration, in person, within 24 hours of re-entering Thailand to report that I have returned. Again, WTF? I'd never heard of that before either. Really? I swear I asked her for clarification on what I just thought I heard her say and, as god is my witness, she repeated it twice; I am supposed to come back to that Immigration location within 24 hours of returning to Thailand after a simple holiday in another country, get a queue ticket and wait for who the hell knows how long in order to report that I have returned! Of course, I looked incredulous. So then she said, well we can give you a grace period of 4-5 days to come in for that report.
Anybody else ever hear of this "new rule"?
Well, good luck with your retirement visa renewals, my fellow expats. I know only some country expats have to deal with these new rules. The USA is one of them.
