On the 15th of May, I received a phone call from a woman from the Ministry of Interior. In Thai, she explained that she was calling about my citizenship application. She explained that the work permit that I had submitted didn’t cover enough time and I needed to send a copy of my older work permit. I emailed it to her that night. The next morning my wife called her back to check that she had received the e mail. While talking to her, my wife asked when we could expect to have the MOI interview. She was told that if the MOI woman could get all of the documents organized, we should expect to have the interview on the 24th.
On Wednesday the 22nd of May, my wife received a Line message from the special branch police officer, telling her that we would have the interview on Friday. He sent by Line a document instructing us to go to the Lamlukka MOI building and to be there between 08:30 - 10:30 to register.
We arrived about 08:00 and found the room that we were supposed to be in. We had to sign in and give our phone numbers. Getting to the MOI office early doesn’t mean that you get through the process earlier as the order that you got into the interview room had already been predetermined.
At about 08:30 a woman from the MOI told everyone in the room, what to expect. We had been divided into two groups, one group was for people applying through PR and foreign women married to Thai men. The second group which I was in, was foreign men married to Thai women. After she had explained the process I figured that I was going to be there all day as my name was on the second list and close to bottom.
At 11:30, my wife and I was told to leave the waiting room and to take a seat outside of the interview room. There were three other couples there outside in front of us. At about 11:45 we were told to enter the interview room. We were guided by an MOI employee and he stopped us from entering the room and made us wait a few seconds. While we waited I could hear someone in Thai telling the room that the next applicate was me, giving my name, where I worked, how many points I had on my citizenship application (78) and then a number in Baht that I am not sure what it was, I think maybe the income tax that I had paid. After the person had finished talking to the room, we were told to enter.
There was a large U shaped conference table with one person sitting at the head of the table and about twenty or so people on each side of the table. We sat in the middle of the U. The head guy confirmed my name and asked if I could speak Thai. I answered “not really” in Thai. The other questions asked was, can I read and write Thai, where did I live, what did the company that I work for do, did I start the company and various other simple questions. My wife answered all the questions. I spoke very little. We couldn’t have been in there for more than 5 minutes and the interview was over. We left the interview room and went back to the waiting room. We asked if there was anything else that we needed to do, and we were told that was it. Just to wait for about 6 months to receive a notification from special branch.
All in all, it was very easy, well organized, and generally cheerful occasion.
Time from the NIA interview to the MOI interview was about 2 years and 4 months.