yaketyak

But it will also catch SE Asian female students who go to the UK with the intention of finding and marrying a Brit in order to obtain a passport. The UK government has, I believe, already blocked foreigners marrying Brits while on a student visa and this will close a further loophole.

My wife studied in the UK before returning to Thailand. She met me here. She studied with female Chinese. Malaysian and Thai students who were focused on getting married in order to get a passport. I personally know one dumb farang who married one of these 'students'; he's now divorced and penniless while she's receiving cash from the British taxpayer and having a great time now she's hardwired into the UK benefit's system.

Big deal. So a few people come to the UK and try to get a husband. So what? How much does that cost the taxpayer each year? Almost zilch in the scheme of things. And because of it genuine couples cannot marry here until they are 21 (so its allright for 21 year olds to come here with the deliberate intention of marrying then?) Absurd.

Bit like saying lets hang all those accused of murder in the knowledge that some of them will have been guilty. To the other innocents well....its hard luck.

I'm not having a go at you specifically Loaded , but there are already enough controls in place when applicants apply for a visa. Laws should not be introduced that penalise genuine couples just to catch a meaninglessly small number of so-called guilty (you could say cleaver) ones.

If the govt really wanted to save meaningful sums of money how about stop paying layabouts to have tons of kids which i as a taxpayer am expected to pay for. (why do i have to pay anyway for other peoples choice to have kids? ... beats me). Or pull all our troops out of foreign parts of the world where we are butting into other countries business. Now those two measures would save REAL money.

I thought i was going to have to spend an hour or so defending my position on this issue this morning against the usual government schpeel so predictably put by alex_aka_P. (you know .. the "children have no brains to think for themself so we the govt have to do it for them " line. Complete crap of course)

Imagine my delight therefore to see brilliant posts by olredeyes and TAWP who perhaps better than i could have done have summed up the REALITY. Thanks guys you have saved me a lot of time this morning. I agree with all you both have written.

i didnt mean to turn this into a full blown argument

This is a walk in the park, wait till Topfield, Atlastaname, GU22, Silomfan et all and my good self and Jangles join the fray biggrin.gif now that is a fracas.

I must be the Oracle of the Eternal Flame, I speak and they appear together

Good Luck

Moss

" Now its time to roll out the barrel... cos the gangs' all here"

Silom soi 4 is a gay lot? Really?

Sorry, I always think Soi 2 (DJ) and Soi2/1 (G.O.D) is the Gay venues

To Tumbo and orchis,

it is impossible to walk along soi 4 and not realise it is a gay (although not exclusively) soi. I cannot imagine how you have both managed to do it . Amazing Thailand indeed !!!

Have you tried you tube?

there seems to be an unbeleveable amount of Thai soaps on there .. every episode in order ..

maybe yours is amounst them.. worth a shot

Am i alone in the world as being the only person who can go through life not worrying/concerning themselves with what other people are doing ?

I can wrack my brains all day and i will never understand why people are so bigoted? If they don't like homosexuals then don't look. Why all this hatred?

When i am in Thailand i see all sorts of things , homosexuals, ladyboys, drug takers , glue sniffers, prostitutes, under age prostitutes, beggars, con men , i see it all. Most people seem to hate at least one of the above and seem unable to get through the day without spurting their venom here. I just observe it , put it all down to the variety of life , and pass on. The world keeps spinning and i don't let it worry me . In fact i am such a live and let live kind of person i wonder if that makes me unique?

I can't explain it except to say that i accept the world is full of different kinds of people and as long as i don't see any hurt (real hurt as opposed to the largely imagined hurt that the newspapers would have us believe all of the above have) i just get on with my life. To those of you who can't mind your own business i offer this advice... if you don't like it don't look !!

yaketyak>> Looked back and saw that I managed to scroll over a post and thought your reply was to a previous one regarding the killings...sorry for that.

Not often you find someone man enough to apologise. I respect that !!

Mr. Somchai remarked also that he believed the policies set by the Thaksin Administration against drugs were effective in reducing the problem while admitting that the issue of extra-judicial execution would have to be examined by the court.

Yes, after 3 years....

Yeah...and during this time YOU and ME will be his\her feeders, paying his\her food&etc from our pockets (by paying the taxes).

And much longer - if he\she get a lifetime jail sentence....

Why not overdose the pushers by their "product for sell"? It will cost taxpayers just a single injection and 10-15min of time. No courts, no jails, no budget wasting...

Rude? Yes. Strong? Yes. Impolite? And so what? All of those pushers doing THE SAME to our kids. Lets just turn the process back...

Your precious kids can always say no you know. Its not compulsory to take drugs .. its a choice.

When i was a kid there was much peer pressure to smoke cigarettes. I never did. I had a choice and exercised it. The same with alcohol and drugs. I had all these choices when young and made my own decision (no on all counts in case you were wondering)

What are you on?

Kids getting shot has nothing to do with them using drugs and not saying no but with Police units raiding homes on non-dealers on false info (added on purpose by someone higher up in the chain) and shooting up the place, killing completely innocent people in the process.

What are you on TAWP?

The post i was replying to was asking why not give the pushers a dose of their own drugs ... like they are doing to the kids. So i replied stating , correctly , kids have a choice. Like everything with demand and supply be it sex or drugs , there will always be a trade (despite the many attempts to stop them.. why do they bother?) , and kids like everyone else have the choice to get involved or not. Thats all i was saying ... take a pill TAWP and have a nice day !!

madjbs...

totally agree with your last sentence.

Mr. Somchai remarked also that he believed the policies set by the Thaksin Administration against drugs were effective in reducing the problem while admitting that the issue of extra-judicial execution would have to be examined by the court.

Yes, after 3 years....

Yeah...and during this time YOU and ME will be his\her feeders, paying his\her food&etc from our pockets (by paying the taxes).

And much longer - if he\she get a lifetime jail sentence....

Why not overdose the pushers by their "product for sell"? It will cost taxpayers just a single injection and 10-15min of time. No courts, no jails, no budget wasting...

Rude? Yes. Strong? Yes. Impolite? And so what? All of those pushers doing THE SAME to our kids. Lets just turn the process back...

Your precious kids can always say no you know. Its not compulsory to take drugs .. its a choice.

When i was a kid there was much peer pressure to smoke cigarettes. I never did. I had a choice and exercised it. The same with alcohol and drugs. I had all these choices when young and made my own decision (no on all counts in case you were wondering)

quote from WERBS .. "the government are not saying you can not marry......"

No , but they are saying you cannot marry and come to the UK. So yes if you are a 20 year old Briton in a 2 year loving relationship with a 20 year old thai (for example), you have to uproot your life and go to marry abroad because you cannot here. Or just wait a year. And you think thats right and just do you Werbs?

surely if they were going to refuse it they would have straight away

When a visa officer first looks at an application there are three options open:-

1) The paperwork shows that the criteria for the visa are met; visa granted.

2) The paperwork shows that the criteria are not met; application refused.

Both without an interview.

3) The paperwork shows that the criteria seem to be met, but there are one or more areas of doubt that need clarification; applicant invited to an interview.

To my mind calling her for an interview means that the officer is minded to grant the visa, otherwise she would have been refused without the interview. Just ensure she answers all questions honestly, if the honest answer to a question is "I don't know" then that is what she should say.

Or, the visa officer is minded to refuse but has insufficient grounds to justify the decision on any appeal and may hope to obtain further inconsistencies through an interview.........

Yes both 7by7's and thucydides scenarios are possible although , slight caution , if they were thinking of granting it a phone call interview would perhaps have been more usual .

If you are sure you have provided everything asked for then make sure beyond sure that she knows everything you have put in the application. Drill her with dates, Thais are hopeless at remembering dates.

Darren i am so sorry to hear of the turmoil you are going through. Many of us here , certainly I, have been there more than once. You want to mention this to the next person who posts here saying appl

ying for a UK visa is a smooth pleasant experience.

One last piece of encouragement... my MP once told me that in his experience of these matters , almost everyone who is determined enough (with foreign sponcership) gets the visa they want in the end. You have to be hard as nails but you will get it in the end. GOOD LUCK !!

Yaketyyak, if there is any merit in your above post perhaps you would like to explain how over 90% of visit visa applicants each year manage to be successful?

Why do people like you always post about how it is virtualy impossible for what you refer to as an ordinary Thai to get a visa when the facts show this to be untrue? Do you have a financial interest in a visa agent?

Big Spuds, good luck with the hearing.

It never ceases to amaze me how my fairly easy to understand posts are (deliberately?) misunderstood...in this case by "7by7".

One cannot spell out everything child-like otherwise the posts would run to pages and pages.

For the benefit of those my post confused (not the old hands here .. they understand perfectly well)let me explain..briefly.

I am not saying ordinary Thais don't get visas !!

What i am saying is that they have to jump through more hoops than is realised from reading the criteria AND that crucially their success depends not so much on if they have provided what is asked for , but how the ECO on the day CHOOSES to view it. It is true the pass rate sounds very high, often 90%. But how many of these are because of farang sponcership? Rather a lot i think.

And what has the 90% pass rate got to do with the 10% who fail? Many of those will have provided all that is asked for , but ... and here was my point... depending on how the ECO wants to view it , they can pass or fail.

I have re-read my last post .. nothing in it is innaccurate.

One last thing i would like to take up with "madjbs" ... the comment that most applications go "smoothly".

Think about it.. you spend weeks gathering telephone-book thick wads of proof , waaay beyond what is asked for in the rules (becasue one is terrified of not providing enough), a mass of paperwork that many applicants have testified is , in the end , hardly ever looked at properly by the ECO. We've heard many of those stories here haven't we.

You have to have health checks, go to a separate place to submit your application and pay a stiff fee, and then .. and this is the worst bit... have an unknown period of waiting , days or weeks, until you are sent a letter asking you to attend interview or come to collect your passport (just to extend the agony a little longer they don't say if its a success or a failure until you actually look in the passport).And all the time your smomach is knotted up with worry and stress (OH YES you all know what i mean .. you've all had that feeling right?)

Even the much respected and much lamented GU22 , one of the staunches supporters of the system you could find, said that obtaining his wife's visa from the British Embassy was one of the most stressful times of his life. So madjbs ... hardly "smooth" !!

a long times passed just keeping you informed,

We did appeal and have just recieved a letter stating that this case can be moved to my home town (Birmingham) to be heard as an oral appeal where i can attend. Fingers crossed!!!

Does anyone have any experience of this, done a search and found nothing!

Just called and asked how much for a solicitor £300 starting rate for a junior! Looks like i'm doing it alone!

As regular readers will know , this is quite a normal story for those seeking a UK visitors visa. Average Thai wants to come to the UK , has to jump through lots of hoops , assumption is already made by the ECO that the applicant should be refused unless proved otherwise. The onus is always on the applicant.

They then have a fairly standard refusal form that varies only a little with each case. They fill in the spaces to make the refusal seem individual but actaully it just falls into the same pattern as most refusals. Not enough proof of money , ties to Thailand etc.

In the absence of a tick-box system it then depends on the mood of the ECO on the day.

Even ECO's cannot get away with blatent injustice (injustice yes .. but not blatent) so they fish for a reason or two to refuse and then elaborate the refusal around this . Luckily for them most average Thais (the VAST majority of applicants are this) always have a problem proving salaries as its often unofficial and paid in cash which is spent not banked. This is the case here as well. So there you have it , the ideal basis for a refusal should the ECO feel so inclined.

That is the system we have for UK visas. It won't change , if anything it will get worse. The Labour govt love it and so do the opposition. Not because they think it just , because it wins votes amounst the largely intolerant News of the World/ Daily Mail/ Sun reading public. Has nothing to do with justice ..its all political.

I can actually see what both sides are saying in this farce.

Unfortunately i don't have the time to thoroughly read and digest each post , but its clear to me that either the BIA are right (from my quick reading it seems they are not right) or they are not. How can there be a grey area? So how can this possibly take long to solve .?

There should be a way to ring them up , speak to someone senior (as you can with any normal organisation) point out the problem , have it looked at overnight and solved one way or the other in the morning. Instead there is little redress and that which does exist deliberately takes months or even years to get looked at. The whole system of immigration is deliberately shrouded by a lack of speed and complete disregard for the implications of their decisions on peoples' lives. Thats how the Govt want it to be. Unfortunately thats how the opposition want it to be as well so no change in our immediate lifetimes.

Of course if this farce of a Life in the UK test didn't exist at all a lot of this particular problem would not exist either.

How absurd !!

Millions of Britons have got married at 18 (and earlier) because thay are in love , but now our dictatorial government has decided that if you fall in love with a foreigner thats hard luck. You have to wait until 21 to get married.

Why not make it 71? ... that should solve the problem for the govt.

Is this post for real?

I mean , if it was me and i knew i had a year to sell it or lose it , i would make sure i sold it!! Its not that difficult...its worth (whatever that means) 27 million .. you ask 27 million for it ...it doesn't sell so ...here's the clever bit .. you reduce it !! and you keep reducing it until it sells.

I am always annoyed by people saying they can't sell their properties.. all properties can be sold ..its all down to price.

I'll give you a million baht for it .. there... you got an offer which is better than nothing .

Oh come on .... tell us .. we all are dying to know how anyone can overstay by 15 months. I mean how can you even start to justify it .. there is no excuse at all i can think of and i am chaffing at the bit to hear even one VALID reason from you . Or ... is it that you are just totally irresponsible. ?

Don't get me wrong , i couldn't care less how many people overstay as long as it doesn't affect me , but i am racking my brains to think of a valid excuse .. and i can't . PLEASE tell us .

Look whilst all us Brits love the rate to be higher , me included, i still remember that from around Feb 1993 to mid 1997 the rate was constantly between 35 and 40 baht to the pound , mostly 37,38. And even at that rate Thailand was cheap cheap cheap compared with overpriced Britain. The poster who refers to it being 28 is talking about 1983. Between the dates 1983 to 1993 it was mostly in the 40's and never rose above about 49. It was not until the Asian crisis of 1997 that 50 was first breached in modern times although it had been 60 in the very early 1970's.

The way to look at the current low rate (compared with recent years) is to realise that the years 1997-2008 we have been spoilt by an extremely high rate , almost exclusively above 60 and mostly mid 60's and above , and that now we are at the bottom of that band. But its still pretty good . As long as it stays above 60 i don't think us rich Brits can really complain ... although that won't stop us nonetheless

OK Moss ... truce !!.... on this thread at least

Just read the link article from the Independant.

Overall i don't care either way .. human or machine . Remember there will still be humans around to override the machines when they malfunction which will happen occasionally.

I see the writer says from his experience the people manning passport control have greeted him with "gratuitous rudeness" .. so at least i am not the only one now who doesn't think these immigration officers are all sweetness and light.

The link isn't working for me, either.

The implication that immigration officers are some sort of inadequate sociopaths who get their kicks exercising their petty power over people is ludicrous. They are merely people like you and me doing the best they can. It needs to be remembered that an immigration officer at a port of entry cannot delay or refuse entry to someone with a valid visa unless the officer has good reason to suspect that visa was obtained by deception and the holder is seeking entry for a purpose other than that stated.

However, if you feel that you have been treated badly or subjected to rudeness then take the officers name and make a complaint.

UK residents may be interested in a TV programme called 'UK Border Force' on Sky 1, starting Tuesday 9th September at 9.00pm.

I will be setting my Sky up to record the whole of this "UK Border Force" programme. Sounds fascinating. If its anything like the decade old immigration bits that featured weekly on "Airport" (only the early episodes) then all you people who say these immigration people are so lovely and wonderful will see what they are really like. What a nasty crowd they had in "Airport". Really talked down to the customers . Officers named Eric and Caroline i remember .. anyone else remember these two?

Having travelled abroad (mostly to Thailand) extensivally over the past 2 decades i have had a lot of experience watching immigration as i queue to get through the UK queue. I agree some of the immigration officers are pleasant (like the last one) smiling, scan your passport and say have a nice day etc. Then there are the ones like a while ago who scrutinised my passport and said in a meaningful way " you just spent 2 weeks in Thailand eh?" ... superfluous as the passport stamps clearly showed that. Then asked "did you stay entirely in Bangkok?" .. not in a chatty way but in a suspicious way. I snapped yes at him as if it was any of his business and wondered what he was implying . After taking 20 more seconds to look through the various stamps he gave it back to me without a word of thanks or apology for holding me and the rest of the queue up.

Now whats the point of that unpleasantness? THATS why i am convinced that some of them are plain nasty and just want to find fault if they can. Its one of my biggest regrets that i didn't take it furthur and complain.

Moss makes the comment that things run smoother if you are sweet and smiling at them. Why should I if they can't do the same to me first? He is right that only one regime can win though. My comment about the process being Frightening was not well phrased. I should have made it clearer what i meant was that applying for a visa should never be frightening or stressful and that entering the UK should never be stressful. That's what i should have said .. and in reality we all here know that the application process IS frightening and stressful... deliberately so. And yet you all put up with it as if its somehow acceptable.

The changing face of immigration control may suit those people who have suffered at the hands of impolite and rude entry officers, you may in future be faced by a computerized model instead.

Better or worse?

Link from the IoS

Moss,

Link didn't work for me which MAY explain why no-one has replied?

Although unable to read the link , my comment would be that the Government should see to it that there are no rude or impolite entry officers , although the kind of people who choose to become such have always seemed to me to be of a certain type that are rude and impolite and unhelpful by nature. Just my observations.

There is no reason i can think of why the whole process of applying for a visa or entering a country having got one should ever be frightening or stressful . Yet as we all know , it is VERY frightening and stressful. The Government keeps it deliberately so.. for political reasons. Very wrong IMO.

Presumably the computerized model will scan your visa and admit you? In which case i would say its an improvement as you don't have to face sharp faced officials snapping questions at you and then treating your answers with contempt. Because they can .

IF thats what the link basically says , then i prefer it.

Interesting to see that Thailand is attarcting a lot of the cheap trash from the UK. Only a few days ago there was an article in the Nation about two Brits being caught for paedophilia in Pattaya. Just take a lot at Nana, Sukhumvit, etc.....there are lots of cheap Brits hanging around and mind you most are not tourists...rather so called expats who are based here. I know of some who are operating Football betting rackets, some who are loan sharks, etc. Its about time that the visa regulations are tightened to weed out all these trash!

The cheap trash have to live somewhere. Why tighten the visa rules furthur...? Why do you care if there are foreign trash in Thailand ? Does it impact on your life? If you don't like them .. don't look.!!

I don't care how many "cheap trash" foreigners there are in Thailand ... doesn't impact on my holiday at all. Can't see why it bothers you.

Unfortunately we live in a media -led world where a few select subjects , immigration being one of the foremost, is used to fuel a largely ignorant public's hysteria. Which sells newspapers.

You have no chance of any petitioning having any effect. Nothing will change. Being tough on immigration wins votes.

Everything you say about it destroying lives and relationships is true , but that doesn't win votes so its allowed. It is unimportant to those who make the decisions.

You could say the same of other countries, UK for example. Although in theorey the standard of proof is lower , as said above by another poster, the importance is in its interpretation by the Embassy Officials. So if they want to demand higher levels of proof than is required they have the freedom to do so because "every case is different" ... even though in reality actually every case is startlingly similar.

You may be better off petitioning for a "tick box" system where criteria are laid down and as long as you meet the criteria the visa is granted ... taking away the ability of the ECO's to refuse on a whim if they happen to dislike the applicant. And taking away their ability to interpret the rules differently amounst themselves so identical cases can be refused or approved depending on who is looking at the application. This is surely the greater injustice is it not?

And to those who say a tick box system will mean fewer visas or that some will never get a visa because they can never meet the criteria .. well these are the same people who don't get the visas now anyway!!

At least if its clear what is required then applicants won't apply until they know they qualify.