Pink Card and House Registration in Thailand: What Each Document Proves.

Three records, three different jobs

The pink card in Thailand, the blue book and the yellow book are three separate records, and they get mixed up constantly. Each was created under different rules, and each answers a different question about you. Knowing which one you can actually get, and what it proves once you hold it, saves several wasted trips to the district office.

The names are informal. The Department of Provincial Administration, which runs civil registration here, never uses the word pink. What foreigners call the pink card is the identification card for people who do not hold Thai nationality (บัตรประจำตัวคนซึ่งไม่มีสัญชาติไทย), and the blue and yellow books are the two formats of the house registration (ทะเบียนบ้าน).

Behind those three sits a chain of documents only permanent residents deal with, covered further down.

Who can get a pink card in Thailand

The honest answer is narrower than most people expect. DOPA's published civil registration service catalogue lists four cases in which a card of this kind is issued:

• A foreigner permitted to have residence in the Kingdom under the immigration law, which means a permanent resident.
• A foreigner granted special-case leniency to reside in the Kingdom under that same law.
• A person with no registration status, whose card DOPA publishes under its own name, covering stateless and unregistered people recorded in a registration record rather than a house registration.
• Migrant workers of Myanmar, Lao and Cambodian nationality who entered outside the immigration law and are permitted to remain as a special case.

There is no published case for an ordinary long-stay foreigner living here on a retirement extension or a marriage visa extension of stay. That is worth saying plainly, because much of what is written about the pink card assumes the opposite. DOPA publishes those four cases and no eligibility rule that reaches an extension holder.

Some district offices are reported to issue cards to yellow book holders anyway. That is local practice, not a published entitlement, and nothing official either confirms or rules out a discretionary issue. If an office says yes, that answer is about that office. A lawyer can check what your own registrar currently accepts before you assemble a file.

The card expires. Both foreigner card pages treat an expired card as a reason to apply again, but neither publishes the validity period. A specific number of years quoted elsewhere is not something the department publishes.

Blue book or yellow book: which house registration applies to you

A house registration is the record of a dwelling and the people registered at it. For a Thai family it also does quiet work elsewhere: a son's Thai military service registration is filed in the district where his father's name appears in the book. The Bureau of Registration Administration's civil registration guidebook sets out the split:

• Tor Ror 14, the blue book, records people holding Thai nationality and foreigners who hold an alien registration certificate (ใบสำคัญประจำตัวคนต่างด้าว).
• Tor Ror 13, the yellow book, records foreigners who entered lawfully but are staying on a temporary footing, and foreigners who entered outside the immigration law.

So the dividing line is which document you hold, not how long you have lived here or what you own. Without an alien registration certificate a foreigner belongs in the Tor Ror 13 whatever their visa, including someone settled for twenty years on the Thai retirement visa and its yearly extension.

Two further registers exist and are not house registrations at all. The central house register (ทะเบียนบ้านกลาง) holds people who cannot have a name in a house registration, and the temporary house registration (ทะเบียนบ้านชั่วคราว) is issued to houses built on public land or by encroachment.

Getting a foreigner's name into a yellow book

DOPA publishes this as its own service: adding the name of a foreigner holding a passport, whose permission to stay has not expired, into the Tor Ror 13. The published requirements are short, and each one carries weight.

1. The filing is made by the householder or by the person being added. Nobody else appears on the published list.
2. The householder's original copy of the house registration for the property where the name will be added.
3. The passport of the person being added, and evidence of permission to stay, translated into Thai by a credible institution.
4. At least two personal witnesses who can confirm the identity of the person being added.
5. A Thai identity card where the person filing is not the person being added.

The fee field on that page is blank, which means DOPA publishes no fee for the service. It does not mean the day is free: translations and certified copies are charged separately.

Where you file follows your address. DOPA names the district registration office or the local one. In Bangkok the equivalent counter is the registration section of your district office, and every foreigner case the city publishes for adding a name has the householder attending in person with their own identification card.

The permanent residence chain, and how it reaches the blue book

The blue book route runs through permanent residence, and it is a sequence of separate applications rather than one. Immigration Division 1, which handles this work in Bangkok, publishes what each residence certificate application asks for.

Form TM.15 covers a foreigner who came to Thailand before the Immigration Act required a residence certificate. Its document list asks for an identification document that is current, carries a photo no more than five years old, and shows the same address as the house register, plus the original house registration with a copy of the house-number page and the name page. The fee is 19,000 baht and the published service time is 15 days.

Form TM.16 covers the other residence cases, the ones the Division's fee schedule sets out by category. Its document list asks for the original house registration booklet with two copies of the house-number page. The published service time is 3 days.

Form TM.17 replaces a certificate that is damaged, lost, or out of stamp pages, for 1,900 baht. The published service time is 2 days for a substitute, and 6 days where the certificate was lost. It asks again for an identification document whose address matches the residence registration booklet.

The Division's published fee schedule breaks that fee down by case. It is 191,400 baht for investment, work or expert status, for the head of a family supporting a Thai child, and for an adult child of a resident. It is 95,700 baht for the spouse of a Thai national or of a resident, a minor child, and for keeping an existing residence outside the quota. Applying for residence at all is a separate 7,600 baht fee, and the schedule states that fees are not refunded whether or not permission is granted.

The alien registration book comes next, and it carries running duties. Division 1's alien registration page sets them out: collect the certificate within seven days of being permitted to enter or of turning 12, contact the registrar within seven days if it expires, apply for a replacement within seven days if it is damaged or lost, report a change of first name, surname or nationality within seven days, report a change of domicile within 30 days, and carry the certificate at all times. Where a holder dies, the householder notifies the registrar within 24 hours.

Read in order, the chain runs: permission to reside, then the residence certificate, then the alien registration book, and only then a name in a Tor Ror 14. Which route you took to your current stay shapes how far along that chain you can realistically get, and the wider comparison of long-term visa options in Thailand sets out which routes accumulate the record permanent residence asks for.

What each document proves, and what it does not

None of these records grants nationality, permission to stay, or a right to work, and the pink card is no substitute for the Thai national identity card. None of them changes what a foreigner may own either. Ownership sits in separate legislation, which is why buying a condo in Thailand turns on quota and funds-transfer rules rather than on anything in a house registration, and why property lawyers in Thailand are the people to ask about a purchase.

Official fees and processing times

Those are the figures DOPA and the Immigration Bureau published as at August 2026, taken from their own service pages. A published service time is what the office commits to, not a prediction of your queue. The pink card fee is also waived where an earlier card was lost or destroyed in an area the Central Registration Director has declared disaster-affected and the replacement is applied for inside the announced window.

The 30-day figure for a yellow book entry has two escalations written into the same page. Where the registrar has reasonable cause to suspect the filing is unlawful, disguised, or states something other than the truth, the registrar investigates and questions witnesses, with 60 days to finish. Where the case is complex or raises doubt about the law or the documents, the file goes to the Central Registration Office and the limit becomes 90 days.

Renewals, address changes and penalties

An alien registration book is not a one-time document, and the duties attached to it are the part people forget. Division 1 publishes fines for missing them, capped at 500 baht for the collection and expiry duties and at 1,000 baht for the rest, with the expiry duty listed under both figures. The amounts are small. The cost of an out-of-date record further down the chain is not.

Moving house is the clearest example. A change of domicile is reported within 30 days, and if it is not, the address on your certificate drifts away from the address in your house registration. Both the TM.15 and TM.17 document lists ask for an identification document showing the same address as the house register, so a file that would have been routine stalls at the document check instead.

Where these records lead: permanent residence and Thai citizenship

Every document above reappears in a naturalisation file. DOPA's service page for naturalisation as a Thai national asks for the residence certificate or alien registration certificate, both house registrations, the identification card for persons without Thai nationality, and evidence of personal income tax paid for not less than three years.

It is filed with the Special Branch Bureau of the Royal Thai Police in Bangkok, or with the provincial police elsewhere. The fee is 5,000 baht for the applicant and 2,500 baht for a minor child, plus 500 baht for the certificate itself. The published service time is 730 days.

That is the practical case for keeping these records tidy years before you need them. A file assembled slowly, with addresses that agree across every document, is a different proposition from one assembled in a hurry. What permanent residency in Thailand requires, and what Thai citizenship applications ask for after it, start from the same paperwork.

Common mistakes and what can go wrong

Treating the yellow book entry as a formality. It is a registrar's decision with an investigation power attached, and the 60 and 90 day limits exist because files do get investigated. A filing that looks arranged rather than real is what triggers one.

An address that does not agree with itself. Where the identification document and the house registration show different addresses, a residence certificate file stalls at the document check, because Immigration asks for those two to match.

A householder who is not really the householder. DOPA names the householder as one of only two people who may file, and Bangkok's lists have the householder attending in person with identification. An arrangement built around someone who does not control the property is fragile at the counter.

Presenting a pink card as proof of status. It records identity and registration. It says nothing about permission to stay, so a bank or a land office asking about status is asking for something the card does not answer.

Assuming a marriage extension changes the analysis. It does not change which house register applies. If your stay runs on marriage to a Thai national, the underlying marriage record is a separate district office act, and registering a marriage in Thailand covers what that involves.

When to bring in a lawyer

Most of this is counter work, and counter work is usually cheaper to do yourself. Help earns its keep in narrower cases: a registrar exercising discretion, a file past its published service time, an address history needing reconciliation across several documents, or a residence application where a non-refundable 191,400 baht fee makes a rejected file expensive.

A lawyer can check which cases your district office currently accepts, review a document set before it is filed, and tell you whether a claim you have been offered is something the department actually publishes. Immigration lawyers in Thailand handle residence and citizenship files as routine work, and general Thailand visa services cover the extension work underneath all of it.