uncleeagle

1 hour ago, TallGuyJohninBKK said:

If this is the key document, then it says nothing about when the O A visa was issued, it just says an alien entering under O A visa will need insurance from 31st October.

It also says nothing about reentry permits and extensions. based on O A.

At this point I see no reason to believe an IO would not be able to justify denial of entry for an existing O A and/or extension, based on claimed inadequate insurance.

1 hour ago, ubonjoe said:

No

It will only apply to OA visas issued after the insurance requirement goes into effect.

Thanks Joe

Do you have at hand an accurate translation of the police order indicating that existing O A visas and their extensions will be exempt from the new requirements?

If so could you copy and paste it?

It seems strange to me that the new requirements would only apply to newly issued visas. It also seems strange that busy immigration officers are now going to examine insurance policies at the airport as a queue of people are wating to be admitted. It seems more logical for new visa applicants to be subject to the new requirement and then all extensions no matter when they got their initial visa. Then again, this is Thailand and Thailand is rarely logical and usually strange.

Now Im even more confused.

For an over 50 with an existing O A visa, who has obtained a multi entry extension...

If that person is currently abroad and flies back into Thailand after 31 st October, will they be denied entry unless they have obtained a recognised insurance policy while abroad?

Or, will their existing multi entry remain valid until its expiry, but their next extension application be subject to the new insurance requirement?

Any guesses?

3 hours ago, bangkokequity said:

Provide insurance for existing conditions ... or just go away ... seriously ... why not just say ... "there is a new 20,000 THB fee to live in Thailand, because giving money to an insurance company who will not pay the bill ... is pure folly.

the lowest premium ive seen from the listed companies is 30k a year....so i. afraid they would have to be saying a 30k per year visa fee...your 20k is too optimistic...

what if elite visa holders above 50 are told they need to buy health insurance? things are changing very quickly, the changes seem driven by money and xenophobia, maybe an element of racism, not by logic and evidence. the elite visa may be riskier than people think.

6 hours ago, ubonjoe said:

The new rules are not for extensions of stay.

Only if a person applies for a OA long stay visa at a embassy or consulate in their home country is the insurance required.

You certainly have nothing to worry about at this time.

If you read the actual police order they simply refer to extensions and does not say only to newly issued visas. so in fact it would seem the initial news statement may have been inaccurate.

1 hour ago, thasoss said:

16pages for what? or am I missing something here? Yesterday it was stated compulsory health insurance will be required from October 31st for all applications for a non O-A visa.. end of story until they decide to include extensions of stay sometime in the future 

reading the actual police order suggests it will cover extensions. the initial news coverage was probably wrong.

Note that although the initial news announcment stated the new insurance requirement would not apply to those exending an existing visa for retirement, I think this may be wrong. 

The actual wording on the police order says that the insurance requirement applies to extensions, period. There is no mention of whether the extension is to a new or existing visa.

So it looks like all retirees will now have to fork out between 30 and 90k per year depending on age and insurance company to be able to extend their visa...or leave. If you buy an insurance plan and still have your application rejected....i guess thats just going to be tough.

So I have a new passport and the old passport contains my old non O visa stamp and reentry extension and multiple renentry stamps permitting stay until some time in 2020.

The old stamps need to be transferred at Chaengwattana, which you would think would be simple.

But this is Thailand. The existing TM30 is for the old passport and a new passport cant be used to register an address until it has been stamped. But until a new TM30 is issued the stamps cant be transferred. Catch 22.

Will it be legal to stay until the stay by date in the old passport without getting the stamps transferred and just showing the old and new passports when leaving? I dont care if the old multiple reentry stamps and non O visa become nullified, I have made other plans and do not anticipate more than occassional and short visits in future.

At this point I dont think I am willing to take any more immigration nonsense but hadnt anticipated this problem when getting my new passport. I am now pretty much done with Thailand but need to know if it will be safe to exit without transferring stamps?

Any guesses?

Thanks Joe and Jack

Does anyone know if there is special desk for this at Chaengwattana and if there is a fee?

Hi, I have renewed my passport and need to transfer my old reentry permit and the latest entry stamp. Does anyone know the process for doing this at Chaengwattana....time it takes, cost etc. Also, the old TM6 will have my previous passport number, does that also need to be adjusted? 

Does the original non immigrant O visa stamp also need to be transferred?

Thanks

3 hours ago, yellowboat said:

Scam, pick a neighboring country to reside, and only visit Thailand when the itch needs to be scratched. 

Thats my plan....done with this nonsense...the TM30 was close

to being the final straw...but there is no way I am going to be scammed out of 30-50K a year for insurance i dont need and would be useless anyway....i already have insurance....what this scheme amounts to is a 30-50K charge for the one year visa extension...although even if you buy the policy you could of course still be rejected so its actually worse than a fee.

So instead of spending 6-8 months a year in thailand and spending well over a million baht in the country i will spend one or two months on 30 day visa exemptions and thailand will lose a million baht or so...thats a lot of new indian or chinese tourists they will need to find...or whatever their latest preferred ethnic group is.

And what if the vast majority of unpaid bills are incurred buy non O foreigners, such as ordinary tourists, or migrant workers, or other visitors?

What if the vast majority of non O holders are high spending and law abiding and respectful and respectable people who are now going to say enough is enough and just not come back?

Is there any evidence at all to support these xenophobic claims, or is this just a sneaky trick to raise revenue for the insurance companies and elite visa scheme?

On 5/24/2010 at 4:37 PM, lovelomsak said:

I always go in on day it is due. If due on the weekend I go the friday before the date. But from previous posts it is my understanding up to a week before. When retired have all the time in the world .

You go on the due date, which would be the leave by date of the extension. So what would you plan on doing if for any reason your application was rejected? Would you just become an overstayer or make a sudden rush for the border, or get the first flight out of the country? Do you go to the immigration office with your bags actually packed or have them waiting at home? Or no plans?

If they cross a boundary into a different province I presume they will need to stop and visit immigration to have their new TM30 registered. 

Or will they be arrested for working, or not haveing the correct “go for a run” visa or otherwise just abused, branded as a criminal, perhaps sent to the detention centre to await deportation?

Thailand, you have abused your visitors for too long, nobody will want to run in your idiotically run country. There is a pay back at some point for your xenophobia, racism, greed, dishonesty, small mindedness, nastiness, abuse and arrogance.

Screw your cross country run.

42 minutes ago, peterb17 said:

Simple 

 

Always travel business class- as stated dress well- takes no effort to wear a jacket etc- the cabin crew will hang it up for you. 

Arrange for the meet and greet- not expensive - staff will guide you  through fast track - you will have no problems- and arrive rested.

 

Easy 

Last time I flew Thai airways business class into BKK and had an automatic fast track card, there was still a long queue, most of whom didnt look like business or first class travellers, with the usual shouting and rude behaviour. I had to wait about 45 minutes and it was quite chaotic. Admittedly it was about 1.30pm on a Wednesday, apparently a very busy time, but it seems to me things at BKK are getting worse and worse and there is no way to guarantee an easier time.

given the trend towards greater and greater hostility and inconvienience towards foreigners, whether tourists or on longer stays, im assuming this mandatory insurance requirement will go ahead. im also assuming we havent seen the end of this tendency towards ever more extreme forms of monitoring, charging, fining, bureaucratic harassment and otherwise simple and malicious abuse.

i have ample insurance already, but i am sure only the useless but high priced local versions will be accepted and that all it is a form of tax at best, extortion at worst.

plan accordingly, either to pay up and put up with whatever else they decide to stuff down our falang throats (feels like its somehow directed at us) or get out.

you decide. 

nothing but brazen and vile greed, arrogance and the sensitivity of a child...and yet the west allowed this monster to grow and now certain regional countries seriously expect to be friends?

Consider Malaysia too, such as in KL or Penang. Thailand is geared up to rip off foreigners without mercy, they seem to be charging several times the prices available at international grade hospitals elsewhere. And along with that price gouging the implied unscrupulousness would also make me question the quality of their service and whether it should be trusted. I would also consider Singapore, Tang Tok Seng for example, which is a semi government hospital providing excellent treatment quality but at a lower cost than the more well known private hospitals targeted at the rich and/or foreign.

“During rush hours, the immigration counters at Suvarnabhumi Airport could clear about 2,000 passengers within an hour, but the immigration officers also had to be on alert for foreign criminals trying to pass themselves off as tourists, and many passengers were not allowed to enter the Kingdom, Choengron added.”

I very much doubt that there are truly many “criminals” trying to enter Thailand but this statement suggests they first assume that to be the case, apparently fill some arbitrary quota, reject a large number of innocent people in the process, labelling them as criminals and abusing them by locking them in a detention centre until deportation.

In their xenophobic minds, do they for example automatically label as a criminal every person who uses visa exemptions an “excessive” number of times, eg, 4, or is it 5 or 6....or perhaps just 3 if the IO is particularly nasty or just in a bad mood.

I would like to see evidence of this large number of criminals, or atleast a set of logical and reasonable criteria by which they select this large nunber of people to reject and deport, and have this reported in the mainstream foreign media so that potential visitors are fully aware of the risk involved in visiting Thailand.

It used to be the case that the media wrote about the jet ski scam etc or the frequency of road accidents as well as violence towards foreigners but surely the risk of being randomly labeled as a criminal by immigration, locked up and deported should also be reported as a very real risk to add to all the other ones.

2 hours ago, johnnybangkok said:

So let’s start here:

“What he actually said was biological differences exist and that they may slightly bias men and women towards different subjects. He was scientifically correct, logical and reasonable in what he said.”

 

The only reason wonem are “biased towards a different subject” is because men have told them they can’t excel in anything (other than child rearing) since time immemorial.  However academic studies have shown for decades that women can and do, out perform men in the classroom. It them comes down to timing. Women have a biological clock that makes producing babies after 35 SUPER difficult. In other words you cant have both career and family particularly easily. Never an issue for men.

Secondly, If he worked for me I’d have sacked him as long time ago. More for voicing a very obviously 1950,s opion than anything clever. All companies have to portray moving forward. It’s good business sense and right to do. If you want to publicly go against a world  philosophy then you might as well say you hate handicaps, old people, blacks, gays and Jews. It’s the same. 

As for the rest of your posts based on free speech. You may have a poInt. 

 

Its a difficult dividing line. What becomes taboo and what is considered  inciting of hatred. Do we allow obvious contentious “shock jocks” like Alex Jones to spew their obvious nonsense when that nonsense starts to invite violence? When innocent people can and have been harmed? Or do we always side on the side of free speech and however repulsive your views are, they have to be heard?

I’ve thought long and hard on this and I reckon that if someone is being harmed by these words then you have to suspend your self righteousness and protect the person. No one allows ISIS to spout their nonsense- as I’m sure you would agree- so they rightly get stopped for the harm it can do others. I see no difference. 

The line however is VERY worrying and can be easily manipulated. Trump is a no brainer but other legitimate voices can be silenced through “national security” and other political bias as  we have seen in Thailand for example. 

The genies is out the box for sure. Hopefully sane minds will prevail. 

He didnt express a 50s view and it isnt true that women are biased because of male oppression or being told they cant do X but they can do Y. The same biases exist in countries such as Sweden which have been pushing hard line gender equality and opportunity for decades. His view simply reflected known and accepted scientific fact that biological differences exist and men and women do not make the same choices. 

He was fired for stating accepted scientific fact...science of the 2000s not the 1950s.