thaiowl

thaiowl, on 2011-09-13 10:15:52, said:

You can get on a tabien baan anywhere you like where you are either the owner of a condo or where the owner of your house or apartment is willing to sign the paperwork for you be on the tabien baan. One thing I am not sure about is whether you have to apply for a work permit in the location of your tabien baan or where you work but there is now a work permit office in Hua Hin anyway.  Similarly, you can register for an alien book in the local police station of wherever you are on a tabien baan and will have go there for the endorsements which are only every five years.  Remember that you need to get your Residence Certificate from Immigration within 30 days' of PR approval under the Immigration Act and that Immigration will probably need to reconfirm evidence of your address for this.  Immigration will then send your details to the police station that covers this address to issue your Alien Book which also has to be done without delay.  So you will end doing all of this twice, if you haven't already got a yellow tabien baan in Hua Hin when you PR comes through.

If you intend to apply for citizenship in future, bear in mind that having a Hua Hin tabien baan would involve applying to the Special Branch provincial HQ in Prachuab Khiri Khan. Some provincial Special Branch offices can't be bothered with this process and just refuse, pretending that it is not their responsibility.  I would think Nonthaburi would be a better bet for this, as they have quite a few applications and should understand how it works.  Bangkok is best as they have a Special Branch department, dedicated purely to nationality applications.

Personally I would get the tabien baan in Nonthaburi in your situation, if possible, as you may never know what unanticipated event will have you scuttling off on a paper trail to Hua Hin or Prachuab at short notice, unless of course you plan to make Hua Hin your primary residence in the near future.  There is no need to wait, as you can get a yellow tabien baan before you get PR, if you haven't already done so.  

For Brits District Offices no longer issue tabien baans with the nationality of "Angrit", as in the past. They now have computer code for each country and nationality and have finally caught up with the news of the union of English and Scottish crowns. I think Immigration, the police and the Labour Ministry are still lingering in the 17th century and may record the nationality of Brits as "Angrit", much to the disgust of Scots, Welsh and Northern Irish, unless asked to do otherwise.  This can cause problems if you are "Angrit" in your other Thai documents and you might be forced to go around changing them one by one so as to have the same nationality in all.  So for any Brits in this situation I would advise them to ask Immigration to inscribe their nationality as British in their Residence Book on day one and the police will take it from there for the Alien Book. Changing it later takes months and many visits and phone calls to Immigration and the police station which both seem to suffer from amnesia when dealing with such enquiries. It is also advisable to bring documentary evidence of your parents' nationality when applying for your blue tabien baan.  There is a space for this information and the district office will enter "nationality unspecified" if no evidence is provided and that can cause you to be looked on potentially stateless at some time in the future, as happened to me. The evidence required is a declaration made at your consulate of your parents' details and that they are or were British citizens by either birth (in the UK), descent (from a British citizen) or naturalization.  Consulates will ask for documentary evidence but the British will probably take your word for it, if you haven't got any and don't look obviously like a sex tourist or have too many hideous tatoos etc.  Then this document needs to be translated by a certified translator and taken to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to have pretty coloured stamps plastered on it to notarise the vice-consul's signature and certify the translation as correct which doesn't necessarily mean that it is free of glaring errors.