vermin on arrival

13 minutes ago, DannyCarlton said:

Because you are here on a tourist visa. You're gaming the system.

FYI, I had a confirmed ticket to Taiwan on the 29th and tried to get out before midnight on the 18th when the travel ban was announced but the evening flights were canceled so it was impossible to get out on EVA, but I botched it. Should have run to the airport and gotten on any airline any flight no matter the price. I just wasn't expecting every border to shut at roughly the same moment.

24 minutes ago, FarFlungFalang said:

I just received my letter from the Embassy and will head in tomorrow to see if it will be accepted.

I just got mine in e-mail will go soon. Hope they accept it even though it is a scanned copy, and not the original from the embassy. Good luck to you @FarFlungFalang : )

11 minutes ago, DannyCarlton said:

Because you are here on a tourist visa. You're gaming the system.

Not at all. Just trying to survive. As soon as travel opens to Taiwan or Laos I am outta here.

4 hours ago, Just1Voice said:

They would deliberately downplay then sir one reason - to protect the "image" of Thailand at all costs!

Exactly, face is everything here and to admit their lies and failure and incompetence would be absolutely crushing to them. People do not want to admit they were wrong in this culture.

I am still waiting for mine.

28 minutes ago, jackdd said:

After reading the problems here i did of course do my best to annoy the immigration hotline.

As always difficult to get a straight answer out of them, so after some back and forth, this is not what was said, but my interpretation of it:

This order is real and exists, but they are not using it yet (no idea how they can justify this, because imho the document is binding since 5 days). So i assume that maybe the immigration police head of every province got this order, but they didn't instruct their IOs at the front desks to follow these orders.

I did also contact the 1111 government helpline to ask about this document, but they couldn't find this in their system yet. She promised to do some research tomorrow and call me back when she knows more.

If i know more i will let you know ????

 

So it could happen that if you go to get an extension tomorrow they might still ignore this document and give you 7 days to leave the country.

 

 

 

Lol. Interesting. So maybe they will decide later in the week or next week to do it.

Yes 72 hours is what I got in my reply as well. It will not be an original though through the mail; it will be an e-mailed letter, which does not seem to be acceptable to IO offices atm.

2 minutes ago, Maestro said:

 

With "notarized", does the Bangkok immigration office mean that the consul's signature on the embassy letter must be authenticated by  the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA)? If this is the case, the MFA will get overrun with requests for authentication and will hopefully tell the immigration office to stop this nonsense and accept the letters without the MFA's authentication except when they have a good reason to suspect that the consul's signature is fake.

I'm not really sure Maestro, but seems they want some kind of original and official document from the Embassy.

I completely agree, but it seems that Thai immigration is showing little compassion

5 minutes ago, Maestro said:

 

Not so marvellous after all, because members' posts indicate that the Bangkok immigration office does not accept this US embassy letter as proof of necessity because the letter is generic and does not specify the name of the person for whom the necessity is being certified.

 

More recently, there is this post where a member got informed by the US that will will give him a personalised letter. Hopefully, immigration will accept this.

https://forum.thaivisa.com/topic/1155116-immigration-is-allowing-30-day-extensions-of-entries-memorandum-dated-1803/?do=findComment&comment=15197087

 

Yes, that's me. I hope so too, but from the photo from Phuket Immigration it appears that many IO will be requesting original documents from the Embassy that e-mailed and printed letter may very well not fulfill. I don't know if we can get the Embassy to EMS us originals.

2 minutes ago, khunjeff said:

If that's really what immigration is asking for - and we've only heard that from second hand reports - it would really indicate that they don't know what they're talking about. What will be provided going forward is exactly what immigration says they wanted: a letter FROM the embassy. A paid, notarized letter would simply be a personal statement by a US citizen whose identity had been verified by the embassy. 

Unfortunately  it seems they are requesting original documents. Here is a photo another member took form Phuket. I suspect CW in BKK will be doing the same.

1 minute ago, xvend said:

PHUKET

How can we get the original when they are being e-mailed to us?

8 minutes ago, Kivetoruk said:

US citizen, entered on a 30 day visa exemption. Later I applied for and received a 30 day extension of stay at Udon Thani immigration office.

Plan was to do a border run to Laos or Cambodia and obtain a new visa exemption valid until my scheduled flight home in May. That's not possible now.

 

My flight route to return to the US involved make a connecting flight in Taipei, Taiwan. That's currently not permissable as Taiwan has recently prohibited non-national passengers from transiting their airports.

 

I sent an email to the US Embassy today explaining my situation in detail and included a photo copy of my passport. I requested a letter that I could present to the Immigration office for use in obtaining another 30 day extension of stay. This is the response I received back one hour ago.

No letter!

Thanks to all who have made positive contributions to this thread and others concerning travel issues.

Good luck to everyone.

I will keep searching for a solution to my problem.

They told me personal letters will be sent within 72 hours although that was part of the form letter sent.

18 minutes ago, Maestro said:

 

Thailand does not have notaries.

They want them notarized by the US Embassy which has closed all appointments due to Covid epidemic.

19 minutes ago, Maestro said:

 

Doesn't the US embassy send their letters by mail?

Emailing them now and only a standard letter with e-mail communication is not considered acceptable

7 minutes ago, elviajero said:

They are talking of people being stuck in the airport or unable to leave. The bloke caught - on overstay - in a bar has the same risks of overstay prosecution as before if they haven’t applied for an available extension.

What I meant by this was will the punitive measures such as potential trip to IDC and travel ban if arrested be voided as the tourism minister proposed. I have no desire to overstay, but will not just jump on a plane to anywhere right now for a variety of reasons. I don't think this measure was only for people stuck in an airport although individual IOs can interpret things how they want. Certainly I am not using this to hang about in a bar and have every intent and reasonable cause to apply for an emergency extension.

Thanks @artiz BP links will be deleted by mods I think. So when and for how long will this go into effect and does this also mean that criminal penalties will be voided. That article is from January 27, 2020. Is it still valid for all of us?

1 minute ago, Maestro said:

 

That's absolutely marvellous. With this letter, immigration should accept an application under clause 2 of the Memorandum even though there still are flights to the USA.

 Unfortunately no @Maestro. Best anyone got was 7 days at CW with multiple people rejected. IOs demanded personal notarized letters when the Embassy is closed for appointments.

For sure overstaying is a last resort. What is the word on the proposal by the tourism minister to decriminalize overstay during this crisis?

Good luck. Let us know what happens : )

4 minutes ago, bangkokboy888 said:

UPDATE: Called US embassy American citizen services and got through operator and to someone working from home. 

 

they mentioned that they received several reports of people going in with the generic letter and being rejected. 

 

the section chief is approving a decision to go with individual letters with names on them and figuring out how to distribute them to people in person at embassy since they also received reports that thai immigration did not allow for paper copies. 

 

write to american citizen services ([email protected]) with your name and passport number and they said they would be getting back to people with additional instructions. 

Ah so we need to pick it up in person. I was also told a screen shot of the bio data page was needed. I have already sent it, I have started anew thread about this issue of letters from the US embassy.