Who can file here from 31 August 2026
The Chicago district is fourteen states of the Midwest: Arkansas, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North and South Dakota, Oklahoma and Wisconsin. Ohio, right next door geographically, belongs to New York.
Chicago is the only one of the four U.S. posts that promises in writing to reject applications from outside its district: “Applications from outside our jurisdiction will be rejected”, and filing to the wrong district is listed as a separate item among the grounds for refusal. Checking whose state you are in matters here more than anywhere else.
The consulate’s page and the application form disagree
Chicago has no separate DTV page, and its visa page has not changed since 30 July 2025. The words “permanent residence” and “criminal record” do not appear on it at all: the post has not reflected the 31 August rule in any way. That does not mean the rule is not there — it lives in the e-Visa form, one form for every consulate in the world, and since 31 August that form carries two new documents: proof of permanent residence and a criminal record certificate.
What Chicago has written about non-U.S. citizens was written long ago: a copy of a permanent resident card with proof of employment, or a copy of a valid U.S. visa with an employment letter; a self-employed applicant needs a business license or a business registration in the applicant’s name. The post has no separate description of “permanent residence” to match the new field in the form.
The criminal record certificate
Chicago does not mention it; the form requires it. The safe answer is the same as at the neighbouring U.S. posts: an FBI Identity History Summary no older than three months.
How it works: $18 per person, mandatory fingerprints on form FD-1164, and with an online application the answer comes within 48 hours of submitting electronic fingerprints at a USPS location, or up to 15 days by mail. There is no expediting, and FBI-approved channelers work only with people inside the United States. The FBI does not put an apostille on the document; State Department authentication costs $20 per document, about five weeks by mail and seven business days in person. An apostille does not work for Thailand in any case until 28 February 2027. Whether the posts require the certificate itself to be legalised, not one of them has written; by the text of their pages an English-language certificate from a national authority needs no legalization.
How filing works
- Everything online, through the e-Visa portal. Chicago does not publish the size of the fee; at Washington and New York it is $400.
- Timeline: “up to 15 business days no expedite”, usually within those 15 days. This is one of the few U.S. posts to have named a number at all.
- Finances per the form: three months of statements from one or several banks with a balance no lower than 500,000 THB — about $15,158 on 3 September — or a sponsorship letter as a full alternative.
- The consulate does not issue visas to anyone already in Thailand: it says so in plain words.
- Dependants: by the general rule a spouse and children under 20; Chicago has published no requirements of its own, and the certificate and the proof of residence the form asks for apply to them too.
What else matters
There is not a single first-hand account of Chicago — zero mentions in our files over the whole time we have been watching. That is not a gap in our intelligence but a property of the market: fourteen states about which the community knows nothing. So here we do not retell anyone else’s experience; we check against the primary source and the form.
From 15 September 2026 visa-free entry for U.S. citizens drops from 60 to 30 days.
What we track here
Whether Chicago will produce a DTV checklist after 13 months of silence. Whether the post asks for the certificate and the proof of residence in practice. And the first live case: it will close both questions at once.
A package you have assembled yourself we check before filing — the Preflight Check: $300, a written report within two working days. Full support all the way to the visa is the Solo Route and Family Route.
The state of every consulate is on the live board, and the consulate assigned to your country is on the map.