Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing the recently announced suspension of TM 6 cards in Thailand. For those who are unaware, these are the arrival/departure cards people fill out on their way into Thailand. If you are a foreign national in Thailand, you come in and they are usually put into your passport and they actually put a stamp on it as well as in your passport. As we noted in another video recently on this channel, the TM6 card was effectively suspended and the question kind of became "is it going to be suspended forever?" That remains to be seen but for now in order to promote efficiency at Thai Immigration and coupled with the fact that biometric data is taken upon entry, it was kind of felt that the TM 6 was a little bit redundant so they temporarily suspended it. I hesitate to say we can presume it's going to be suspended forever or it is eventually going to be canceled; I never want to presume anything with Thai Immigration, it's too hard to say. 

But okay, one thing we have seen an issue with is there are a number of things, it is kind of similar to when they stop issuing Work Permits for those who were the Heads of Representative Offices. At the first glance people said "Oh this is great, I don't need that Work Permit anymore.” There are unintended consequences to these things because there are certain other aspects of the bureaucracy that want to see, wanted to see Work Permits in that case, and there are certain circumstances especially when you are dealing with things like Company set up and oftentimes things like possibly property leasing or purchase, oftentimes we want to see that TM 6 card. It is part and parcel of seeing a copy of one's passport and we have seen a number of snafus pile up in the past couple of weeks where one Bureaucracy says Hey we want to see a TM 6 card" and we say "There isn't a TM 6 card, it's suspended. We are not dealing with that anymore", and it's a little bit difficult sometimes to get folks who operate in certain official capacities to understand that that rule has changed and that there no longer is that document available to that person.

These are definitely things that we find, we have to go through a process of explaining that but yeah this is kind of one of the unintended consequences of something that at first glance would seem like a net positive thing, getting rid of the TM 6 Card, less Bureaucracy, less documentation; it just kind of streamlines everything getting rid of that. But yes there are unintended consequences to it. It is a document that certain bureaucrats here in Thailand were used to seeing and when that changes you can have kind of this period of flux where they are not quite sure exactly what to do.