yaketyak

Doubt very much this applies to people coming in from the european union though, thats the BIG issue we have right now!

Mark

It doesn't , and this is at the root of the problem . The Home Office are no doubt consumed with fury that they can't stop the low life from the EU coming here , so they are instead taking it out on those they can victimise. Thais are thus ideal candidates.

When the pair married a year later they brought Sakhon's two children, Ging and his sister Kanoklak, 15, over to the UK.

I suspect the roots of their problems would be found in a full explanation of how they brought their children to the UK and on what Visa.

Of course this is the likely reason. Also they don't just come knocking at your door without you having notice that this will happen. Having said that , if it were not so difficult to bring family to settle in the UK we wouldn't have these problems. Then again it is as difficult if not more so , for us to settle in Thailand .

The real pity for me is that the whole process cannot be made more humane. Applying for a UK visa is such an unpleasant experience , made worse by the kind of people who choose to work in the embassies and the kind of people who choose to work in immigration in the UK. In my experience they are unpleasant people who no doubt get a kick out of the suffering they can so easily cause.

Ever tried to talk to one of them , its like talking to a traffic warden ... same kind of basically nasty people who love the power they have

Answer to the OP, go back to Thailand (you have no choice anyway) and apply for a settlement visa

I have said it many times before on similar threads .

Thailand is , and maybe they are right to do so, only interested in money . This being a given i cannot understand why they care who comes intro the country or for how long they stay. The back packers still spend money , the sex tourist still spends money , the high ender spends loads of money ... what do they all have in common ? they all spend money. So why does the government care who they are ... let everyone in and let them spend their money.

Now whats wrong with that logic?

Unfortunately Billfo our visa system is such that your gf's application can be refused with or without inconsistancies. If the visa officer decides that he/she fancies your g/f won't return to Thailand it can be refused.

Therefore you should be honest with all your answers , fill in the form correctly , supply all the documentation asked for , explain your relationship, ... and then hope

Phil, to answer your questions

1) i read somewhere recently , could be ukvisas site?, thast 2 year visit visas are available to "appropriate" applicants. I construed this to mean not your average low earning or unemployed Thai but the higher ups in society. However thats just how i read it ...could mean something else. Thats why i said do let us know if you get the 2 year and how easy it was to get. Personally i know no-one who has it although other posters do so it is possible it seems.

2) not contradictory at all. I agree the fees are a rip-off but i also think its a trivial amount in the scheme of things. When chatting to many farang in Thailand or the UK i am constantly amazed at how they will talk of spending small fortunes on booze and sex in Thailand but when it comes to visas or flight tickets or accomodation they are as tight as you can get. ( i am actually the other way around!!). I can only speak of those i have known , but they are all wealthy ... and tight

3) doctormann has answered your last question for me .

If its hypothetical , why ask?

Even the police will openly tell you that the jails and prisons here are for the poor and the stupid.

So what you are saying is that if you are comparatively rich , you will not find your way to jail because you will be able to come to an arrangement with the police? Probably right .. what do others think?

Also you have all overlooked one other category of foreigner who CAN find themselves in a Thai jail, .... the one who has upset anyone with criminal friends or anyone in high places. Police can be paid to plant evidence on innocents who have crossed the wrong people.

It would be interesting to see if she could get a two year visa. Unlike Mahout i don't know anyone who has obtained anything other than a 6 month visa , so if you do apply for one i for one would be interested in the outcome. I always understood that two year (and the old 5 and 10 also) were reserved for those for whom it is "appropriate" which is official speak for "not your average Thai" . Do let us know.

Regarding the fees i do have to disagree. THB 14400 , whilst a rip-off like all visa fees, is such a trivial amount to us Brits that to even consider it is absurd. The massive advantage of getting a two year visa and all the hassle it saves over getting regular 6 month ones is well worth it.

We are supposed to have a system where the Entry Clearance Manager reviews such refusals to see they are correct.

When you have time i would push the Embassey to explain why , as it was won so easily on appeal, why the ECM didn't overturn it on the day and why the ECM didn't overturn it when you applealed to the ECM to do so after the refusal.

The reason of course is the system of review by the ECM is a farce . It needs changing so that the refusal really IS reviewed not just rubber stamped. You have been put through a HUGE amount of anguish and expense just to get what you should have got in the first place.

The safeguards that are supposed to stop this didn't ... you need to know why.

Yes the Daily Mail does not have the power to pass laws, but what it does is whip up public hysteria (which is already at fever pitch) over its pet subjects .... anything to do with children and sex , and the other one ,anything to do with immigration (the Sun does the same thing BTW), .... and then publish story after story about them to the extent that the surprisingly gullible British public then is brain-washed into believing them .

For example , they will run a headline "public outrage at light sentance given to ......." when a simple reading of the story will reveal that the "public" don't even know about it until they read the story so how can there be public outrage ? Answer there is none ... its made up by the newspaper to 1) sell their papers and 2) to indoctrinate the rather easily swayed British public into adapting their way of life to what the newspaper (ie Rupert Murdoch) thinks fit.

Unfortunately nothing i have seen about Gordon Brown suggests it will get anything other than worse.

We will all be goose-stepping in the (non-smoking) streets before long !!

You won't have to be in the UK too long to realise one thing has changed. Almost monthly the country is becoming more and more controlled by the Stalinist Labour government. Hardly a day passes without something else being against the law, you can't smoke at bus stops, all shops have to obey the State and put notices at their entrance doors staing that it is against the law to smoke in the shop (your shop but you are TOLD what you MUST put at the entrance) , the State tells you what you can look at on the internet , you don't have freedom of expression , call someone FAT even though they most definately are and you will be sued to death in court , in fact everyone walks around scared of their own shadow , frightened to say anything. And if you happen to be unfortunate enough to go anywhere near a child for gods sake get away quick before you are accused of molestation or assault .(the country has become almost unhinged in its so called "protection" of children and you are guilty whether you are or not)

Sounds like i am going overboard in my exaggeration doesn't it ? Sad thing is i'm not . Its frighteningly close to reality.

Our lovely country has become a horrid , controlled , one because those in power have decided the answer to all their problems is to make everything people want to do against the law. That is their solution. Much of the blame can be put at the door of the right wing papers like the Daily Mail and News of the World , against whom the government is afraid to act.

Welcome back to the UK!!

As this appears to be such a perverse refusal in the first place, i am wondering Dean if you contacted the ECM after the refusal to have it reviewed.? If it was so obviously wrongly refused as the judge has said then how come the ECM didn't spot this obvious error and overturn it?

Well done Dean.

Wonder if you'll get an apology from Bangkok for wrongly refusing your visa and putting you both through 8 months of hel_l unneccesarily?

Don't hold your breath !

So he is going to change the outlook and views of the entire society is he. You can't stamp out what everybody does or would do if they got a chance.

Exactly. No-one wants it stampled out , so why do it? Works just fine as it is.

Let us hope that the changeover will be smooth.

Bit worrying that it says any facial marks or scars have to be healed. I mean suppose they don't heal satisfactorily? And i would imagine any labourer will have multiple cuts to his fingers and face area thus making the scans invalid. Would they therefore have their applications for visas refused? Seems so, yet that seems unfair.

If you read the article it says "appeared to be as young as 12" the key word being appeared. Thai girls who are 21 can look 15 , so a 16 year old could look 12.

It seems the only thing they could prove was that a girl/s of 15 years old were being used.

Whilst not condoning that , its not the crime of the century either.

What made me happy today ?

Hearing on this morning's news that George Bush had been taken ill at the G8 conferance. Set up my day nicely .. lets hope its nothing trivial

To reply to the OP's question , yes of course its a problem . Hasn't it always been?

But exactly what is any government supposed to do about it? People like to drink , the same as many people like to take drugs , and nothing any of them has tried to do in the past few decades has had any effect.

My solution ?... is to educate people as to the dangers they face if they drink to excess (as is done anyway) , make sure everyone who drives knows the consequences of drink driving, and then leave them to it . If , after knowing the consequences , they choose to drink/take drugs , then who is anyone to interfere.?

Thailand is a country heavily dependant on tourism. It needs a big inflow of foreign money just to maintain the status quo . Without this foreign tourism and investment the country would just become a backwater .

Given this , and the Thais legendary love of money and record of corruption, why does the government care who comes into the country as long as they have money.? If they want to keep the country at the top of the tourist lists , why not just let everyone in , for any amount of time , as long as they show they can afford it? There could be a mandatory 6 monthly visit to immigration to show funds and get a reneval stamp.

This way they will get rid of the deadbeats who have nothing and thus contribute nothing monetarily, and attract and keep those who do contribute monetarily.

I realise there are other considerations that us westerners can think of , but if the Thai government just wants money , they should ignore international pressure and let in who it wants to .

After decades of various countries trying to combat the use of drugs by its citizens , we are today no furthur advanced , if anything more people have access to them and are using them.

Does make you wonder why SO much money is expended on trying to fight a battle they clearly cannot win. That money could be better used elsewhere. Why don't they just pull the plug , educate everyone better on the dangers , and then let them get on with it. The world will still keep spinning i'm sure

my recent experience has a slight twist in that my wife went through the foreign nationals line as i didn't realise we could go through the UK/EEA one together. She was through in no time . I however , on waving my British Passport to the I/O in the UK queue was stopped, had my passport strutinized as if he thought it might be a forgery , then grilled on why i was in Bangkok and why i stayed two weeks. I replied it was none of his business, which it isn't, and was then told i could pass !

Such uncalled for rudeness , that meant that my wife was waiting for me to clear immigration instead of the usual other way round

Depends what you mean by not too expensive.

Two very central to the nightlife and not far at all from the Embassy are

1) Tartawan Place on surawong road near patpong around 20000 baht a month

2) Better is Swiss Lodge just off Silom Road , although that is quite expensive. Its very nice indeed and peanuts to us foreigners.

Of course one thing to factor into all of this is that Forkinhades has one big advantage... he has been happily living in LOS for years now . So whereas we Brits have maybe made more actual money from our properties which , if sold , could buy us a swish new condo in BKK business district , we have had to endure years of living in this boring country (i am referring to the UK in case of confusion) whereas Forkinhades has lived in Thailand. So you could argue convincingly that he is the richer one because his quality of life has it would seem , been very very high in a wonderful country.

So hats off to him .

One last thing i would like to comment on is that people i know have spent years and years saying they will not get on the property ladder yet because they are waiting for the crash. I really believe this will never happen . The worst that will happen is that the UK housing market will take one of its periodic pauses (and i think we are starting to see this right now) and everything will slow. Sellers will not reduce their prices but rather wait until they get what they want , or just sit tight until the market starts up again. Thus no crash, not even a fall, just stagnation for a year or two. Meanwhile those who have waited are still forking out rent (which is not cheap) monthy in month out , whereas if they bought they would be paying off their mortgage instead.

Moral here... if you want property buy it as soon as you can . This of course only applies to the UK , for Thailand i would still rent and wait until the situation becomes clearer or until the Thai authorities make it clearer and more easy for foreigners to own property which cannot be taken off them at a whim by a nationalistic government. Now if that happened property prices in Thailand , at least in tourist areas particularly Bangkok , would soar.

I have 2 houses in Pattaya, both bought for 1.8 m baht each, had them for 5 years now, 1 has been rented for 4 years, and i have lived in the other one for 5 years, so have nearly got my money back, from rental returns ( another 3 years will suffice), and the money i would have paid in rent in 'my' home is almost returned too, and they are both worth in excess of 4 mill each now, so no regrets.

by the way, if you have got the balls, now is a good time to buy, and rent out, cos everyone is scared to buy.

Agree with your last sentance , although they are scared for a reason.

Also , and i know this is not your reason for doing it , but if you had bought a house in the UK 5 years ago the returns would have been the same percentage -wise but you would have been much wealthier because a house bought for say £100000 would be now about £300000 so you would be "up" by about £200000, whereas you are actually up by about 2.2 million baht (only £33000) on each .

For this reason i would always rent in Thailand and have a property in the UK. Financially you are always better off this way as , for some reason , property in anything other than the most popular business areas, never seems to increase much in Thailand. And its all very well saying your place is worth 4 million , but getting a buyer who will actually go through with it is another thing. Whereas in the UK a property can always be sold readily as long as the price reflects reality.

Just my 2 cents worth

Great pics frpm billp....

unfortunately original genuine pictures of BKK streets are almost totally unavailable. I have tried for years to aquire some without any luck.