BritTim

The new passport is genuine. You need to change your argument to claim that the embassy would carefully recheck that that all the correct procedures were followed in acquiring the passport, which I personally do not believe is likely.

The discussion is about the best way to proceed when someone has renewed their passport in an irregular fashion (not through VFS). By the way, while some immigration offices may transfer stamps when you enter with a re-entry permit without an embassy letter, I distinctly remember reports of cases where they refused.

I think you are right that people have success with this. I seem to remember doing this when renewing my passport in the days when it was done through Hong Kong. Some, though, will claim that the letter will not be accepted by Immigration without an official (non photocopied or photo shopped) embassy stamp.

Well, I agree. That does not stop me from advising on the best way forward. Yes, this ought not, strictly speaking, to have been done. However, he is not exactly a master criminal, and trying to cover up his misdeed is perfectly moral IMHO.

Thai Immigration will, of course, know that the new passport arrived from the UK without you leaving. That is not much different from what happens when you renew your passport through VFS. The UK embassy should be willing to provide a letter without closely examining the new and old passports. That is why I believe the irregular nature of the renewal should go unremarked.

He has no valid visa# or re-entry permit# to write on the TM6 form, so your advice does not apply.

The stamps in your old passport remain valid. Your extension is unaffected. However, Immigration will insist of using the new passport when your new extension is processed. As you say, getting the appropriate letter requesting transfer of the stamps is necessary. You should contact the UK embassy in Bangkok for this. I do not think VFS will be willing to interact with you as you did not use their service for the renewal. The UK embassy should be OK with this. Just tell them that you arranged to renew the passport while in the UK. There is no necessity for them to know you did this in an irregular way.

That is certainly the way it is done, and part of the cost of the application is paying for the couriering of documents between VFS and the passport office in the UK. This is vitally important to ensure the process is slowed down as much as possible.

Just an idea: if the authorities are aware that 90% of the UK population wish to have passports, might there be a case for staffing passport offices accordingly? At a minimum, they could, perhaps, decide to have as many passport offices as Thailand where (as you say) the demand is much lower.

As others have advised, it is easiest to do the re-entry permit at the airport, where the immigration official will do everything an agent would do and more for 200 baht over and above the cost of the re-entry permit itself. Using an agent (or going to an immigration office yourself) is more trouble, and only worthwhile if leaving Thailand via a land border. Just allow an extra 20 minutes or so at the airport.

Although, in my opinion, against the intent of those who decided Covid extensions should continue, all extensions are technically at the discretion of the immigration officer. That is why, although it is an abuse of their discretion, there is no redress if an officer wants to deny you (and his superior allows or encourages it).

Here is a report from the Laotian Times dated May 22: https://laotiantimes.com/2022/05/25/laos-announces-updated-tourist-visa-fees/ I am unsure what they charge to pay in baht, but I believe the exchange rate is as horrible as ever if you choose to do so.

An immigration official having such powers is very normal and, indeed, is the practice in most countries of the world. What I have trouble wrapping my head around is the fact that you do not understand that such powers comes from the laws of each country. Thailand has decided, unlike most countries, to provide immigration officials at entry points much less power than is standard. (There were good reasons for this, as it happens.) There is no natural law or religious teaching that gives officials powers that a country's legal framework does not provide them. The Immigration Act specifies what should happen (see Section 22) when the competent official discovers that an alien who has entered the Kingdom is prohibited from entering the Kingdom under the provisions of Section 12, For some inexplicable reason, besides not mentioning the "discretion" provided to competent official, the Act is also silent on the procedure to be followed when denying entry other than under the provisions of Section 12. [except that, based on reported experiences, the official need not (as in the situation described in Section 22) provide a written notification explaining the reasons for his denial, and will use his discretion to refuse to provide the TM11 form needed for an appeal.] If interested in what the TM11 form looks like, see https://aseannow.com/applications/core/interface/file/attachment.php?id=569010

I will grant you this. Whether a foreigner actually satisfies some of the reasons (under Section 12) to deny entry can be a matter of debate. When denied for such a reason, the foreigner ought to be allowed to appeal if he disagrees with the official's decision. I am trying to imagine what the stamp in the foreigner's passport would look like when "using discretion" to deny entry for a reason not listed in Section 12.

Progress, I think. You now accept that officials must use one or more of the reasons given in Section 12 when denying entry. Our point of disagreement now is whether this is what they are doing. I believe they are improperly adding reasons not specified in Section 12 to deny entry. You believe that Section 12 somehow allows them discretion to do anything at all. We are not going to agree, and I was absolutely wrong to write this reply. Unfortunately, I sometimes find it hard to accept the reality of cognitive dissonance. ????

Sadly, this is true. You claim that the official can use reasons other than those specified in Section 12 to deny entry. I cannot persuade you to suspend your preconceived notions and actually read Chapter 2 of the Immigration Act objectively. I give up.

Just for information (it is a minor detail) once you are denied entry at either of the Bangkok airports, you are escorted directly to a detention room airside. You are locked in, and have no further contact with Immigration. Your only contact is with the airline representative (same airline that brought you to Thailand) who are obliged to remove you from Thailand. [I can see you will deny this also, but I have had discussions before with people about INAD (inadmissible) passengers. Even when the airline is completely faultless, they are obliged (by international agreement) to follow the instructions of Immigration and take responsibility for your removal.]

Let me ask you a question, and see if this can get us closer to a meeting of minds. When an immigration official wants to use the "discretion" you believe he has to deny you entry for reasons he believes sufficient, (i) should he stamp your passport accordingly, (ii) should that stamp specify the reason(s) under Section 12 that the denial was made, and (iii) what is the appropriate reason under Section 12 for "you have been here too long on a tourist visa"?

You can make all kinds of requests. Once an official has decided to violate your legal rights, you should not expect such violations to be selective. Many Burmese scapegoats for crimes in Thailand will tell you, when a police officer is suffocating you with plastic bags to extract a false confession, demanding your rights is often totally ineffective. Thailand is not like Germany. The law is often followed, but there are many rogue officials and cliques of officials. The fact that you do not recognise this is why we cannot carry out a meaningful discussion with each other. You assume that officials must be honest and law abiding. I know that this is not always the case.

I appreciate that this was frustrating, but the officials at your local office did nothing wrong except, perhaps, an over zealous home visit which is sometimes done for Non O applications, but is usually pretty relaxed if done at all. The idea is to verify your address, and see if neighbours had anything bad to say about you that could justify rejection of the visa application. When your local immigration office stated that the paperwork had not yet been returned to them, this was almost certainly truthful. When division headquarters sign off on the application, they do not hurry to return the paperwork to your local office. It gets added to a stack of applications to be sent back to various offices. Finally, the Non O visa application does not work like an extension in terms of dates. It is totally standard that the approval date starts your 90 days. Really, that is a small matter anyway. It just means that your 800k baht will be seasoned ready for the one-year extension a bit earlier. I hope you did not give your local officials a hard time. They were just following the procedure that had been given to them.

I struggle to read Thai legalese, and have only done this for Chapter 2 of the Act. However, I have several times been through two separate English translations of the entire Act. When I stand in front of the official in a country like Thailand, I am well aware that knowing the law at least as well as he does will not help me. If his superiors permit him to ignore the law with impunity, there will be nothing I can do about it. Thailand has limited rule of law, and that is something I am forced to accept. The positives of spending time here outweigh negatives such as this. I can ask him (via the appeal process) to get the Minister's endorsement of his denial (the default being that his denial is revoked) but he can simply refuse me my legal right of appeal (unless I am able to quickly call a well connect immigration lawyer (in which case the official would probably back down).

You are never given the opportunity to prove it. They simply tell you you are denied because you have been here too long, or some other reason which they are not allowed to use to deny entry, then stamp your passport with a bogus reason, such as the "no way to support yourself" nonsense.

... and, an additional illegal act, they prevent you appealing. If the denial of entry is legal, the stamp they are obligated to make in your passport (and the paperwork they are supposed to provide but often do not) should reflect the reason under Section 12 for your denied entry. As we know, they will verbally give you a reason not outlined in Section 12, and then give a false reason on the passport stamp.

Please cite the Section of the Act that you believe grants them that authority. Thanks.

I cannot figure out what your post is trying to say, except that you did not appear to enter Thailand with either a Single Entry Tourist Visa, or a re-entry permit associated with an extension of stay from original entry with a Non O-A visa. I am guessing that you are saying that you entered Thailand without a visa or re-entry permit yesterday and, being from a country whose nationals are entitled to visa exempt entry, were given the normal 30-day permission to stay. If this is what you mean, it is no difference from the experience of thousands of other foreigners every day, and does not seem to warrant a special topic in this forum.