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Easiest Way To Get Thai Passports For My Family


dean

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The airline tickets are set for the end of May for my wife and three kids to go to LOS for the Summer. Now, I just need to get their thai passports renewed, as they expire next month. This has to be done in person, in order to take the bio-metric data that they want. It can be done at the Thai Embassy in Washington DC or at the thai consulates in New York, Chicago, LA or Houston. Living in the Chicago district (in Kansas City), its too expensive too fly there and is a 550 mile drive. The consulate does make mobile trips throughout the year and will be visiting Kansas City in early April but that doesn't give me enough time to get the new passports before they leave. I called the consulate to see if they had any mobile visits coming up to St.Louis or DesMoines or Omaha (all half the distance that a trip to Chicago would be) but the thai prick that answered the phone just wanted to talk with my wife and all they discussed was what they needed in documentation when we made the trip to Chicago. If I have to, we will drive to Chicago, probably leaving at midnight on the sunday during spring break, satisfy the people at the consulate and turn around for the 8.5 hour trip back home the same day. Any other suggestions out there? I did consider having the consulate issue emergency, temporary passports to get them to LOS and then have them apply for permanent passports while in LOS. I don't know if that is feasible but anything would beat driving 17 hours in a day, with a 2 hour period in the middle at the Chicago consulate.

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From KC to Chicago is about the same distance as Chiang Mai to Bangkok, which we drove several years ago for the interview for green cards at the U.S. Embassy. We didn't drive back the same day but the road from CM to BKK is awful. Southwest flies into Chicago Midway airport (which I assume would be more convenient than O'hare) but the RT price is $200 times 6 persons. The gas to make the RT trip should be around $200-225. If I do drive, at least on the way there, they should be asleep most of the time. I'll periodically call the Chicago consulate to see if I get another person answering the phone and hopefully find out if there mobile unit will come close to KC and go there instead of Chicago.

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  • 5 months later...

Even though this is an old thread it might help others in a similar situation.

 

Believe it or not, you could have just flown them in on their expired Thai passports and they'da gotten into the country just fine..

 

Thailand has a dealy where they can't refuse entry to a Thai (even a half thai) just because they have an expired Thai passport. Then you could have gotten the passports renewed here in Thailand which I believe takes less than a week.

 

I just met up with a Thai friend of mine who lives in the US and came to Bangkok. He flew outta the US on his US passport, and entered Thailand on his expired Thai passport.. Didn't have a bit of problem.

 

Once a thai always a thai I guess, whether you have an expired passport or not...

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The only concern that I would have is the airline allowing someone to enter LOS with an expired Thai passport. As it turned out, it took 3 weeks after going to Chicago to get the Thai passports back in the mail. Even my step son, who applied for a new passport 3 weeks later when the Thai Chicago consulate was in KC, got his back in the mail 3 weeks before the rest of his siblings left for LOS. At least, when the passports expire again in 5 years, they (except for the 5 year old) will be on their own in renewing them.

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