Who can file here from 31 August 2026
The Los Angeles district is thirteen states: Alaska, Arizona, Wyoming, Idaho, California, Colorado, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, Washington State and Hawaii. It also covers the U.S. Pacific territories — Guam, American Samoa, the Northern Mariana Islands — and the U.S. Virgin Islands: in the e-Visa master data this post has five countries of residence, not one.
Los Angeles rewrote its DTV page on 1 September, closing a gap of nine months: until then the version of 3 December 2025 stood, and it said nothing about permanent residence or about the certificate.
What the post calls proof of permanent residence is — quoting word for word — “valid driving license, valid U.S. Visa, Permanent resident Card”. That is the widest reading of the rule we have seen anywhere in the world. But the post did not separate citizens from non-citizens in that line, and there are no confirmed decisions on driver’s licenses yet. We quote the wording without building a plan on it: for a non-U.S. citizen we prepare the usual package — a valid U.S. visa or a permanent resident card plus an employment letter with the wet-ink signature of an authorised person. Pay stubs and an offer letter are not accepted in place of the letter.
The criminal record certificate
“FBI Criminal certificate issued within 3 months” — the FBI only; the post does not name a state certificate. For Californians that matters twice over: their own California DOJ certificate under Record Review, at $25, is expressly barred from use for visa or any foreign purposes, and for those there is a separate Visa/Immigration track at $32 plus the fingerprinting fee, for which the state declares no turnaround time. And Los Angeles will not take a state certificate anyway.
How the FBI side works: $18 per person, fingerprints on form FD-1164, and with an online application the answer comes within 48 hours of submitting them at a USPS location, or up to 15 days by mail; there is no expediting, and approved channelers are available only to people inside the United States. The FBI does not put an apostille on the document; State Department authentication costs $20 per document. An apostille does not work for Thailand until 28 February 2027. The post accepts documents from third countries with a certified translation and certification by an embassy, a consulate or a foreign ministry.
How filing works
- The fee is not published on the DTV page; at Washington and New York it is $400.
- The post does not publish a timeline either. The four cases we have range from two to five weeks, but all of them are from April 2025, and we do not offer them as the norm.
- Finances: “a copy of a recent” statement with a balance no lower than 500,000 THB; the dollar figure of $17,000 was deleted by the post on 1 September. Whether that means one statement or three months it did not explain — we prepare three months, as the form requires.
- The standard request for documents, applicants say, is every page of the passport, blank ones included: that is how the post checks that you have not flown out of the country.
- Dependants: a spouse and children under 20; residence and the certificate are required of them too, and an adoption certificate is named separately.
What else matters
Muay Thai just got more expensive in paperwork. On 1 September Los Angeles added a requirement for an official letter of acceptance and support from the Sports Authority of Thailand and documents from an SAT-certified gym. In the December version of the page not one of those words appeared. Within the same three days Singapore asked for the SAT letter too — plus a letter from the Ministry of Tourism and Sports. Two posts on two continents in three days. Who issues such a letter and how, not one post has explained.
From 15 September 2026 visa-free entry for U.S. citizens drops from 60 to 30 days.
What we track here
Whether a driver’s license closes the residence requirement for a non-citizen. Whether one statement is enough or three months are needed. And how people actually obtain the Sports Authority of Thailand letter.
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.