Big Brother is trying to watch you: Thailand Edition
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.
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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.
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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.)
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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.
Expat money inflows helps build up a system to watch and harass expats. Positive feedback loop. I guess it'll happen pretty much everywhere until it's really not worth it to be an expat anymore. I can't think of a country that wants non-rich or non-retiree immigrants anywhere anymore.
Vietnam... at least for now. Many central and South American countries also. However, they want you to have some money and be able to contribute to society a bit... which is understandable.
Ohh, that's nothing new.. 😁
Even before TM30 one had to tell the immigration where you live..
It's the same in nearly every country you live as an expat...
Have a great day
Tom
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I'm ok with registering an address. Obviously this is something you need to do. People are not happy about the fact that they can not even go stay anywhere for more than a day without needing to notify the authorities. Of course this is relatively impossible to enforce. The only people I know that are affected by it are people that would never break the law anyway.
I think they will have to change the rule again! Dysfunctional rules will just die sooner or later. They are not capable of enforcing these silly and impractical rules! They just push the paper work so as to create more jobs to keep themselves in employment!!
Crazy way to waste tax-payers money too!
job creation does seem to be a major part of this. I can't imagine this information being stored in any sort of usable fashion. The database would be massive. I don't think they are storing my information at all because when i went in the last time they had no record of my old addresses. I think it is just a piece of paper so someone can have a job stamping stuff. :P
Few countries pose strict rules on immigrants, including Thailand. I guess Thailand must be most serious on this subject.
Anyways you got no choice but to abide them as it's hard to live in other country
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He isn't trying, he is doing it;)
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Oh wow, that is pretty crazy. I would have to fill one of these out every weekend in the Summer. We are often gone camping pretty much every other weekend for at least three days. I can't imagine having to check-in and fill something like this out every time. That seems a bit excessive.
Big Brother is watching you evrywhere. Especially if you have a smartphone and a google account. They know evrything about you its really sad.