Transcript of the above video: 

I have been kind of staying away from this topic of the Thai-US mail interaction kind of hoping it would kind of resolve itself. And Tim Newton down there at Tim Newton Today - tip of the hat to you sir, we have collaborated on some content in the past - he did a pretty good job of covering this, I think about a week ago. I'm going to kind of do a follow-up on this because I received an email from a viewer and I am going to go ahead and quote this directly:

Message from Social Security Administration: Quote: "We are writing to inform you of important updates regarding mailing services in Thailand and the submission of Social Security forms.

Temporary suspension of Thailand Post First-Class Mail Services. 

Thailand Post has temporarily suspended its first-class/standard" (so both) "mailing services to the United States due to new Customs deposit requirements."

Now apparently, this is somehow stemming from the tariffs. I don't want to get into a big analysis of all that just yet. I'm hoping again this is going to kind of be worked out. I just want to kind of report what's happening here. Quoting further: "However, Courier Services such as DHL, UPS and other partners of Thailand Post remain available." And we have been using FedEx. I've been using FedEx for years, as well as DHL in some cases and sometimes UPS but FedEx a fair amount. FedEx hasn't really changed very much; things are moving ahead with them pretty all right. Again I mail stuff to the US Immigration service. I have in the past used registered mail services and standard mail services depending on how we are interacting with Immigration but for things like filings and stuff in a US Immigration context I tend to use FedEx just for the tracking capability and the fact that they get it there with intense reliability. That said, quoting further: "While these Services may be more expensive, they are reliable options for sending official documents to the United States. 

Social Security Forms Submission (and this may be pertinent to those who are watching this who are American) Given the mail disruption, we recommend sending completed and sign SSA-7161/SSA-7162 forms directly to the following address via courier with tracking capability (example FedEx, DHL UPS): 

Social Security Administration, 

US Embassy - Manila 

Attention: FEQ (and then they have got all the address stuff down there) 

Please note that forms cannot be submitted via email or fax. 

If you have further questions or need assistance, please contact the Federal Benefits Unit in Manila or visit the SSA website for guidance." 

So hopefully that will be of some use to folks who are on Social Security. For now what can I say? The mailing system is in a less-than-optimal state. How will this play out? Well I have to presume that through sort of the International Postal Union channels we will see this being somehow worked out so that we will see the ability to mail things be returned. Got to be honest with you if you told me 2 years ago or something that we wouldn't be able to use the basic mail, I would have told you, you were crazy but here we are.

Now that said, again private courier services seem to be optimal; we are still interacting as we always have with agencies such as US Immigration Services back in the United States. But that said, standard mailing services, as well as first-class mailing services do not seem to be the optimal way to be corresponding with the United States at this point. That said, we will continue to keep people updated on this channel as this situation evolves.