Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing Thai Marriage Visas and whether or not it is a "Bureaucratic Maze". 

I thought of this whole thing when I was reading a recent article about Retirement Visas. It is from the Bangkok Post, bangkokpost.com, the article is titled: Retirement no mere snooze. Quoting directly: "Even after completing the Bureaucratic Maze that is needed to acquire a Retirement Visa, retirees have to maintain their status by regularly reporting to officials and that means keeping up with changing rules and regulations." When I read this and this is just the Immigration nerd in me, I immediately sort of said you can replace Retirement with Marriage and Retirees with Spouses of Thais and you would largely be talking about the same thing. 

The long and the short of it is, I don't know if it is fair to call the Marriage Visa process a Bureaucratic Maze. Frankly it is from one standpoint a bit more straightforward than other Visa categories most notably things like Retirement and Business Visa but it is still pretty cumbersome. More to the point, especially with Marriage Visas, we see a lot more scrutiny by Thai Immigration especially on newly married folks who immediately apply for a Marriage Visa for a foreign national, for a lot of different reasons. I have done videos on this. They uncovered a ring of sham marriages some years back; they have real fraud issues that they are concerned with in the Immigration apparatus associated with Marriage Visas. So yeah we do see a lot of heightened scrutiny when you are talking about Marriage Visas here in Thailand. By heightened scrutiny, Immigration Officers may show up at your door wanting to see if you are there with your spouse, at your home; is this your real home and want photos, this and that. We have gotten correspondence from people who have had to go through that. So while I wouldn't necessarily call the Marriage Visa process a "Bureaucratic Maze", I would say be prepared for some excess scrutiny.