There is some controversy going on (or whining, depending on how you look at it) at the moment over a new document that the Thai government has required for all people residing in the Kingdom longer than 90 days. It is called the TM-30 and while it doesn't affect me much, people are getting upset about it and I can kind of understand why.
The TM-30 isn't a difficult form, nor does it cost anything. The reason why a lot of people are upset about it is because it is a hassle and it kind of seems pointless. The idea is that you are supposed to let immigration know any time you change your address, which is fair enough.
However, they then changed it so that any time you are not in your house for 24 hours in a row, you are meant to inform immigration of your movements. This includes simply visiting the mountains or the beach for a few days. It often isn't clear where this is meant to take place because not every city has an immigration office and furthermore immigration offices are closed on weekends and holidays. It should come as no surprise that most people choose to travel on weekends or public holidays.
Those of us that have been here a while remember when times were easier. We remember when if you wanted to stay here all you had to do was have a legal source of income and not break any laws. It seems as though more and more documents are introduced every year to make staying here more arduous and time consuming. Many people have gotten tired of the hassles and left - these were normally the type of people that Thailand really wants to have stay here because they own property, pay taxes, support other Thai family members etc.
From my perspective, the truly crazy thing about this form and the massive section of people that certainly must be dedicated to the record-keeping of it is that the intention is to track the foreigners that are living here for crime-prevention. However, there are a couple of problems with this:
- Foreigners don't really commit that many crimes here and I can't recall one instance of a manhunt for a foreign criminal where this form would have helped
- People intent on breaking the law are not going to participate in this form anyway or if they did, it would be with bogus information.
In a truly funny attempt at assisting the foreigners who are really sick of being hassled all the time Immigration developed an online fashion of "checking in" and it went like this. The system was "down" far more frequently than it was working. It ONLY worked with Internet Explorer (not MS Edge, you had to use Explorer and I don't even know how one would accomplish that these days - I suppose you would have an old laptop running Windows 7.)
At the end of the day, we are guests in this country and we have no choice but to abide by whatever law they throw at us. It is important that immigration maybe take notice of the complaints of the 1 million strong expat community though: Tourism is dying in this country and in the city i live in expats constitute nearly 10 percent of the population. If we were to experience a mass exodus, there would be thousands of unoccupied condos and houses, not to mention that for most of us all of our income comes from outside sources and we spend it all here.