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ResourcesVisa & Immigration LawVisa NewsThai Consulate in Penang Limits the Number of Thai Visa Applications

Thai Consulate in Penang Limits the Number of Thai Visa Applications

Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are going to be discussing the recent development with respect to a Thai Consulate rather near to Thailand so it is a rather high-volume post for Thai Visa applications. That is the Royal Thai Consulate in Penang, Malaysia. It recently came to my attention that there are some developments with respect to the number of applications that Consulate is willing to accept on a daily basis.

In order to cite sort of where I got my information, this article is Thai Consulate Caps Visa Applicants, written by Don Ross May 9th, 2018 on the website ttrweekly.com. Quoting directly, "no reason was given but the Consulate has been unable to do deal with the unusually high volume of applications which results in hours of queuing and considerable complaints". Let me go back there and quote again further. "In a bid to reduce long queues, the Thai Consulate in Penang will handle a maximum of 100 visa applications daily effective May 14th, 2018. The Consulate in Penang has traditionally been popular with foreigners living in Thailand who need to exit the country to obtain a new visa. As of 14 May, visa applicants will get a numbered queue coupon with a maximum of 100 issued daily.  Also in here is the official announcement from Royal Thai Consulate, Penang. So within this, as from Monday 14th May 2018, visas will be limited to a hundred applications per day. Application AND collection times remain the same so for the regular procedures there haven't changed.  Application forms must be properly filled out and signed, photos already attached in the form. You need various copies of other documentation; I am not going to read through all of that directly here. Quoting further though, "only documents in English or Thai language are accepted. Financial statements provided must be only in Thai baht, Malaysian Ringgit, USD and Euro. Others must state converted sum and rate. So what does this all mean? The fact of the matter is, Thai Immigration in the country here has been more apt to tell people to depart the Kingdom.  In applications for extensions of visa status Thai Immigration have been more willing than in the past to basically say we are not accepting the extension, you need to leave the country and get another Visa. The result of this has been there's been a larger and larger number of applicants in Consulates and Embassies right outside of Thailand receiving applications for new visa status. I think this is especially the case with respect to the volume of non-immigrant status, non-immigrant visas and the result of this has been that there is just a lot more applications.  Clearly Penang is one of the higher volume post most notably because it's rather geographically close to Phuket and for that reason I think is one of the big reasons why it's got such a volume. I think that probably if you go back on our channel here, we discussed the Thai Consulates up in China have been capping the number of visa applications that they're going to accept on a daily basis up there. I think more and more caps on Thai Visa applications can be expected from various Consulates and Embassies around the region in the future, especially these smaller jurisdictional Consulates are just simply don't have the manpower and ability to process the volume ability to process the volume of cases that are being sought through such posts so I think it's probably likely that we're going to start seeing this become more and more of  a common thing or theme maybe which is capping off the number of applications they accept per day because the simply can't handle the volume. So we'll keep you posted with respect to this issue and stay tuned to this channel.