Stargazer
Surin Legend
After two years of attempting to accumulate enough official stamps verifying our USA marriage certificate (long story below), I now possess a yellow book ('Copy of House Registration') listing me (in Thai) as 'A person living in Thailand either illegally or on a temporary basis' at the top.
Unfortunately, I'm unclear as to what exactly all this effort has gained me.
Does this now exempt me from 90 day reporting? God, I hope so after all this effort!
Long story, in case any new USA farang husbands are interested: we originally took our certified marriage certificate from the USA (along with a certified translation) to our local Department of Administrative Affairs in Rattanaburi near Surin City. (in the USA, marriage certificates are a county matter, not state or federal, so an official copy is all you can get from the county recorder, stamped and signed). They said it needed to be legalized. The Office of Consular Services said they wanted a notarized letter from the US Embassy before they would do it. The US Embassy said that all they are willing to do is give you a paper saying you had shown up, and showed them the certificate, which they could not verify, after you pay them $60USD. Meaningless. And, during Covid, unavailable.
The Thai government states that an alternative method of 'legalization' is to have a document certified by your State and then Federal government, and then by a Thai Embassy in USA. So we schlepped the official marriage certificate to the State, and it came back stamped, with a disclaimer that they had not verified it. Then it went to the US Secretary of State, who signed it with the same disclaimer. Then it went to the Thai Embassy in Los Angeles, same disclaim, but by now it had 4 official stamps certifying nothing.
We took it to our local office once more, and they said that it was not adequate, that it must also be stamped by the Office of Consular Services in Bangkok. So on our most recent pass through Bangkok on the way in, we did this. Official stamp disclaiming veracity of certificate, but legalizing it. So the local officials held that the 'alternate legalization' path was not acceptable.
Then yesterday, we spent the better part of a day in the local office filling and signing out reams of paper forms in Thai (I have no idea what I agreed to) in quadruplicate, and then being grilled by a rather skeptical official who questioned why the marriage certificate wasn't dated this year (we explained that there is only one original marriage certificate on record, and they just give certified copies of it).
Does anyone know where the giant warehouses are where all this paperwork is stored? The administrative overhead is truly boggling. In the USA, if you are admitted with a visa, you're free to travel without reporting to the police, which is nice for tourism. One might think that it was beneficial to Thailand to have stable long term marriages to foreigners who bring in lots of cash to the Thai economy, so why not make it easier to spend time here? Just saying. I've read that 60% of the gross product of Isaan comes from farang husbands.
I'm sticking with my annual 'Retirement Visa' renewals, as forum members have told me that the annual renewal for a 'marriage visa' is complex and time-consuming. I wish there was some long term visa available, as in the USA (my wife gets 10 years permanent residence between renewals).
Unfortunately, I'm unclear as to what exactly all this effort has gained me.
Does this now exempt me from 90 day reporting? God, I hope so after all this effort!
Long story, in case any new USA farang husbands are interested: we originally took our certified marriage certificate from the USA (along with a certified translation) to our local Department of Administrative Affairs in Rattanaburi near Surin City. (in the USA, marriage certificates are a county matter, not state or federal, so an official copy is all you can get from the county recorder, stamped and signed). They said it needed to be legalized. The Office of Consular Services said they wanted a notarized letter from the US Embassy before they would do it. The US Embassy said that all they are willing to do is give you a paper saying you had shown up, and showed them the certificate, which they could not verify, after you pay them $60USD. Meaningless. And, during Covid, unavailable.
The Thai government states that an alternative method of 'legalization' is to have a document certified by your State and then Federal government, and then by a Thai Embassy in USA. So we schlepped the official marriage certificate to the State, and it came back stamped, with a disclaimer that they had not verified it. Then it went to the US Secretary of State, who signed it with the same disclaimer. Then it went to the Thai Embassy in Los Angeles, same disclaim, but by now it had 4 official stamps certifying nothing.
We took it to our local office once more, and they said that it was not adequate, that it must also be stamped by the Office of Consular Services in Bangkok. So on our most recent pass through Bangkok on the way in, we did this. Official stamp disclaiming veracity of certificate, but legalizing it. So the local officials held that the 'alternate legalization' path was not acceptable.
Then yesterday, we spent the better part of a day in the local office filling and signing out reams of paper forms in Thai (I have no idea what I agreed to) in quadruplicate, and then being grilled by a rather skeptical official who questioned why the marriage certificate wasn't dated this year (we explained that there is only one original marriage certificate on record, and they just give certified copies of it).
Does anyone know where the giant warehouses are where all this paperwork is stored? The administrative overhead is truly boggling. In the USA, if you are admitted with a visa, you're free to travel without reporting to the police, which is nice for tourism. One might think that it was beneficial to Thailand to have stable long term marriages to foreigners who bring in lots of cash to the Thai economy, so why not make it easier to spend time here? Just saying. I've read that 60% of the gross product of Isaan comes from farang husbands.
I'm sticking with my annual 'Retirement Visa' renewals, as forum members have told me that the annual renewal for a 'marriage visa' is complex and time-consuming. I wish there was some long term visa available, as in the USA (my wife gets 10 years permanent residence between renewals).