Arkady

32 minutes ago, Misty said:

One of our Thai staff suggested that the government may be reluctant to "lock-down" Bangkok because so many people are informally employed.  Under lockdown these folks would lose their jobs, and, having no money would return upcountry thereby spreading coronavirus widely.

This may be true. In the Tom Yam Kung crisis, rural people who had been working in Bangkok migrated back to their villages en masse and there pictures in the papers of fleets of idle Bangkok taxis with no one to rent them any more. But there was a huge mitigating factor.  That was that the recession was not global.  It mainly affected SE Asia. Tourism started booming due to the collapse of the baht and there was work to be found in the tourism industry. 

Unfortunately this time the whole economy is getting whacked even without a lock down yet and the drift back to villages has probably already started.  Another negative factor that was not there in 1997 is the large number of foreign migrant workers likely to be laid off. Burma, which claims not to have a single case yet, doesn't want theirs back.

5 hours ago, Tingnongnoi said:

There is no narrative from what I have seen from any Thai's online outside of Anutin that foreigners are responsible, the only place im seeing that narrative is currently from the easily offended on Thaivisa. There is a ton of flak and blame being aimed at Thais at the boxing community though right now from other Thais

I would agree with that. Most Thais seem worried about catching it from other Thais. 

23 hours ago, dukeandduke said:

Not international schools.

Also a lot of Thai universities and colleges were open.

 I wonder if the water throwing will be stopped completely over Songkran.  The travel back to villages will allso be a golden opportunity for the virus to reach new areas.

Joe's advice is sound. The process for cancelling visas at Immigration is only for people who get naturalised as Thais.  The OP was born Thai but entered the country on a foreign passport due to lack of a Thai passport.  The provision to cancel the visa doesn't apply to him, only people who entered on a foreign passport because they were not Thai at the time.  So he will have to leave the country on the foreign passport to cancel the visa but, as Joe said, it is easy to get one year extensions on the visa, once you have evidence you are Thai. ie. an ID card.

There are many threads about half Thais who have come to Thailand as adults without Thai passport, ID card or house book and want to get all those documents.  Some of the district offices are relatively easy and some make a big song and a dance asking for DNA testing with relatives etc. There have been a lot of ID cards issued to fraudulently, so many officials want to cover their backsides very fully, specially if they are not making any money out of this.  I believe there is even a department of verification of Thai nationality at Immigration for more difficult cases but the OP's case seems fairly straightforward since he has a birth certificate and relatives who can vouch for him.

You can't use your birth certificate for anything much more than getting your ID card.  For travel by air you need a passport or a Thai government issued photo ID card.  A Thai driving licence is OK. 

Being on your uncle's house book is not too bad and if you buy your own house or condo, you can move it to that. In the old days you had to travel to your home province to get a new ID card or to vote.  Nowadays you can do everything where you live.

They still seem firmly committed to the idea of submarine warfare, even though the waters around Thailand are too shallow for their effective use. Perhaps he knows something the rest of us don't, e.g. the Thai navy will get dragged into a conflict in the blue waters of the Pacific or the Atlantic.

9 hours ago, ParkerN said:

The presence or otherwise of fingerprints is not definitive. You can bet your life the guy who put the bullet in the bag (assuming it wasn't the American) cleaned his own prints off - and everything else in the process. But I bet the bullet is the same type that goes in police hand-guns.

 

Surely the courts know about this scam? And since taking this guy to court doesn't make anyone richer, when did they put the bite on him for some 'financial assistance'?

 

This is a real worry for passengers, and it doesn't help very much with my somewhat dismal (learned) view of Thais. This country and it's dismal people collectively really are the pits. Useless for anything that matters.

No indication from the article what type of round it was. 9mm is the most common caliber of policemen side arms but it is also the most common caliber of privately owned handguns in Thailand, both legal and illegal. Probably was one of those but could have been something else. Anyway the type of cartridge wouldn't prove a link to the police, since they buy their own and there is no standard police issue round, although there probably should be.

If it was a plant and a shake down, it probably failed because he wasn't able to come up with enough cash , so got dumped into the judicial process where the court seems to have believed his story and dismissed the case or acquitted him but given the prosecution time to appeal the decision.

24 minutes ago, emptypockets said:

I didn't mention a relationship breakdown but was speaking generally. I'm sure you are well aware of how that occurs. Abusing a waitress over the lack of knowledge of a wine list comes to mind.

I guess a lot people in many countries feel extremely bitter after relationship breakdowns and many may moments where they fantasise about doing something extremely violent to their ex, his or her new partner or both. But in Thailand there is much cultural precedent for actually putting those feelings into action and the means to do so is often readily at hand.

The Korat mass shooting is also extremely dangerous in that it sets a cultural precedent for Thais to follow with a huge amount of detail readily accessible in Thai. Research in the US shows that mass shooters tend to study the details of previous mass shootings before they commit their own crimes. In this sort of case, there is no hope for the shooter to get away with it.  So he could easily have chosen to go out with a big splash like the Korat shooter.

Metal detectors at all the entrances of the mall including the car park might have prevented this tragedy from taking place there, even though it might have taken place somewhere else instead.

Dealing Class A drugs. 

3 hours ago, jayboy said:

On the advice of UbonJoe I'm reposting a question here.

 

 I will be obtaining a new passport in London next month through the one day quick service.When returning to Bangkok is it just a matter of showing the Airport Immigration Officer the old passport with the multiple re-entry? Presumably he/she will stamp the white book as well as the new passport ? Then I presume a trip to CW is needed to transfer the multiple re-entry to the new passport and amend the white book/red book as necessary? Is there a time limit to get all this done?

 

All pretty obvious I suppose but forewarned is forearmed.If some kind person could advise that would be most helpful.

The norm for Immigration is that PRs obtain a new passport in country and go to CW to put that in the system and transfer the necessary stamps and signatures. Personally i would want to check with Immigration first before returning to the Kingdom with a completely blank new passport that is not in their system. Logically they can handle this and must do so in the case where a PR has lost his passport abroad and returns with a new one. But logic is not something that is always in use at Immigration. Personally I would rather get a new passport at the Trendy building which is quite painless, although it takes a couple of weeks to get it back, and go through the normal process at CW after that, rather than risking being delayed by an IO at Suwarnabhumi when I am exhausted from a long flight. 

I once got a new passport in the UK as a Thai PR but that was a second UK passport without any Thai visas in it.  They apparently had no way of knowing it was a second passport in those days, or just didn't care, and sent the new one in the mail to my mother's address with no questions asked and I picked it up on my next trip to the UK.  Nowadays they put you through the third degree asking for justification why they should issue or renew a second passport. For the first second passport I just told them I needed to travel to pre-Rainbow South Africa and black African countries for business (in those days countries like Nigeria would either not let you in or ask for a big dose of squeeze, if they saw any evidence you had travelled to South Africa - same with Saudi vis a vis Israel).  I had a second UK one for three decades but let the last one expire.  It used to be useful to fill up with non-Thai visas so that I could make the main passport last longer, although I never got one to last for the full 10 years.  Now I have a Thai pasport the full page Thai visa stamps are no longer an issue.

5 hours ago, beeper said:

One of them applied last month. Often it seems that insufficient Thai language skill of the candidate play a role 

Why would this make a difference, unless their Thai is so poor that that they think a request for copies of their passport and work permit is actually a request for a bribe? Whatever deal the NCOs on the front desk might be able to do for relatively small bucks is not going to influence the outcome of the panel interview with senior officers, including, I believe some from outside Immigration. If you can't understand and answer the questions asked by the panel which require a decent intermediate knowledge of Thai, you are likely to fail. I went through the process before they introduced a Thai language requirement or the interview panel but friends who have been before the panel have been asked questions like "What do you feel is your contribution to Thai society" and "Do you interact with Thai society and have Thai friends.  Yes.  Then please give the panel the full names of 3 of your Thai friends."  Applicants with only a little broken Thai cannot get through such an interview.  Another friend went in and after the simple stuff like "What is your name?" he was asked a question he couldn't understand.  The panel just brought the interview to a close immediately.  He wasn't told his results in the interview because he was advised to withdraw his application for having a second job not on his WP that they uncovered by cross checking his tax returns. He never reapplied.  If the whole system is now going to the dogs, applicants who cannot speak Thai will find themselves facing a bill into the hundreds of thousands or more, not mere tens.

6 hours ago, beeper said:

The 5 cases cited were all in the last 3 years. To avoid this it seems to help to be accompanied by your Thai spouse/partner when going to CW, especially if they are able to keep the IO “honest” and on their toes throughout the application process. In this specific case, the topic of Tang Duan was never raised. 

I would have thought that being accompanied by any Thai person would make them more brazen, since they know that Thais accept bribery as a normal part of life and don't normally make a fuss, if asked for one by a government official. 

However, I think they may be skating on pretty thin ice.  A couple of years ago a Thai women made a big fuss with her senior government contacts claiming that Special Branch had told her farang husband that some sort of unrcecipted application fee for citizenship would have to be paid to SB officers.  There was a big stink but SB was allowed to conduct its own investigation and exonerated the officer.  It was a bit strange because it turned out that the farang never went to the office himself but just sent a messenger to pick up documents. Anyway despite the fact that the allegation lacked proper substance and no further action was taken following the investigation, a cloud hung over that office for many weeks and stress levels amongst officers who usually spend most of the day happily chatting on LINE rose palpably.

5 hours ago, scorecard said:

Strange. Anything is possible, of course. Seems to me that if the officers concerned decided to try for 'tea money', they would more likely target lawyers rather then actual applicants.

 

Why, overall the ethics of Thai lawyers is way less than .clean', therefore is there a case to say officers would appraoch lawyers looking for a 'partnership' to gather 'tea money'. 

 

As said, anything is possible.

 

I got PR more than 2 decades back, I used an agent who I personally knew very well (he's not a lawyer) there was no suggestion whatever at any stage from my agent or from the offficer when I had the interview of 'smoothing the wheels'.

 

 

 Likewise, I did it in the late 90s and got significant help from a Pol Maj Gen at Immigration and the Deputy Director of the NIA to overcome the handicap of working for a foreign rep office that was in a grey area of the regulations, not being a Thai registered company and not being able to pay Thai tax. Neither of these gentlemen made so much of a hint that they wanted a gift for their significant help, nor did any of the front desk NCOs that process applications or the two junior commissioned officers that interviewed me and told me the bad news that I was unqualified according to Immigration's undisclosed internal regulations.  The latter just told me that if I knew any puu yai, they might be able to help which turned out to be the case.  Call it a type of corruption, if you will, and it was certainly unfair to anyone unable to get help from puuyais, but no one was looking for money or gifts.

6 hours ago, beeper said:

I know of several cases where applicants not using lawyer where asked for”tang duang” to facililitate/accelerate the process. They settled at around 30k each.

So, in fact, the officers at CW are more likely to retard applications of those who don't pay by holding back files, since they have no power to accelerate things within the Immigration hierarchy, being only sergeants and sergeant majors, and 30k woudn't move the needle anyway, let alone at the MoI where the decisions are made.  Asking applicants for dash directly seems to be further evidence of the return to democracy in its Thai incarnation, although more recent elected governments confined themselves to simply blocking PR and citizenship applications indefinitely as they didn't dare take the risk of openly asking foreigners for bribes and refused to sign anything they couldn't get paid for.  Perhaps this can be seen as an evolution of Thai democracy which at least allows things to get done and an embracement of foreigners as equal to Thais who don't make a fuss when asked for bribes.  If so, expect to see in the fullness of time demands for much larger amounts of cash from those who actually have power in the process with applications from cheap charlies left gathering dust in bottom drawers. 

2 hours ago, onthemoon said:

I did mine by myself. I don't remember how many times I went, but I don't think it was more than 2-3 times, once for each step. If you had to go 10 times, you may not have followed the requirements exactly. You don't need a lawyer for that - just read the list carefully and comply. That's all.

 

I heard that lawyers take THB 100,000 (that was the going rate at the time; 40,000 up front and 60,000 upon completion) and then claim they have to pay "support", so the amount increases. I was never asked for "support" and always thought the "support" is their (the lawyers') extra income. 

That's what I have always assumed too. At first I thought I needed a lawyer but couldn't find one who knew anything about the process. If you get requests for squeeze from your lawyer, you will never know if any of it was passed on. A decent lawyer should be able to assist with preparing the mountain of paperwork though, if you are too busy to do that.

I did in it in 1996 without using a lawyer and was never asked for any "support" but did get stonewalled for a bit because I worked for rep office at the time, which was not permitted by Immigration secret internal rules, although there was nothing against it in the Immigration Act or any ministerial orders. The officer told me I would need to get a testimonial from a puu yai, if I wanted to continue with the application.  So I ran around for a few weeks and got one from a Pol Maj Gen at Immigration and from one of the assistant directors at the National Intelligence Agency which is one of the agencies represented on the Immigration Commission. This insured that I got through Immigration's internal committee, despite not meeting their internal regulations, and through the Immigration Commission.  Both of these kind gentlemen were introduced to me by business connections and neither asked for any support. The following year we closed our rep office and bought into a Thai company.  So I could have done it without the hassle a year later but i didn't know that was going to happen at the time.  

The requests for "support" sound worrying.  The system worked well for applicants until the first Thaksin regime came to power.  In my time applications were processed within 12 months.  Then Thaksin's first interior minister, a controversial character who had a house and possibly permanent residence in New Zealand where he sent his kids to school, started questioning the qualifications of applicants and falsely accused Immigration of taking bribes to let in people who weren't qualified. He was just trying to grab attention by hitting on defenseless foreigners and playing the xenophobia political card like Trump.  The result was than many applicants were rejected for spurious reasons although most were able to reapply after the minister had fallen out of favour with Thaksin and been purged. But the legacy of the false accusations of bribery was the whole process started to stagnate and take years.  Everyone was too scared to ask for a bribe and thought the safest thing was never to sign anything, specially if there was no way to get paid for it.  PR applications started to take an average of 5 years and many took up to 8 years.

Fast forward to the 2014 coup and Interior Minister Anuphong's Good Guys In, Bad Guys Out policy.  Fires were lit under the derrieres of officials in Immigration and the Interior Ministry.  The backlog of PR (and citizenship) applications was passed through within several months of the coup. The process was streamlined back to more or less what it had been until the 90s and some applications were taking only 10 months.  The appearance of requests by junior officials for "support" seems to be a very bad sign that political government is back, even though Anuphong is still at the Interior Ministry.  Once he moves on from there anything could happen.  The track to PR (and citizenship) that he cut through the bureaucratic jungle could get grown over again very quickly. 

3 hours ago, scorecard said:

  A bit further;

 

- Out of Thailand in one block period of 364 days and your PR is safe.

 

- Out of Thailand in one block period of 365 days or more and PR automatically cancels. 

 

 

The criterion is that you must leave and return to Thailand with a still valid re-entry endorsement. To stay out for 364 days, you need to get your new re-entry endorsement immediately before departure. No excuses are accepted for returning with an expired re-entry because it's in the Immigration Act. You just get stamped in on a transit visa, if your nationality qualifies.  If not, you may be denied entry.  But you are free to reapply once you meet the qualifications again without prejudice due to the fact that you gave up or lost your PR. 

There seems to be no suggestion that the murderer's father might at fault for allowing his son to get hold of a loaded firearm.

The cook, Mrs Nathee, who made the leopard tail soup for her fat boss, got a real 20 month sentence in place of her 4 month suspended sentence.

i may have missed something but is there any word on the application window for 2019 yet?