Mattd

If a proper system is installed, then tourist visa applications via an embassy would become a thing of the past, that part of the visa system would have to go online to make it effective.

IF Thailand gets this right, then there is nothing but benefit to be gained from it, the question is can they get it right.

There should be no reason why not, so long as it is outsourced to an experienced company who have done this before.

Singapore introduced thumb print scanning for foreigners last year and after a period of testing it has been implemented and works perfectly.

When you enter, you go to an immigration desk / officer as normal, have your thumbprints taken and enter, upon departure, you use the e-gate and thumbprint scanner, takes no time at all.

I believe the new T4 is completely automated unless there is an issue.

Regarding the guesthouse / hotel reporting, they are supposed to do this now, so in theory nothing changes from that side at all.

I don't really understand why folks think it is intruding on their privacy etc.??

1 minute ago, NanLaew said:

Never see a Thai tourist visa where it asks for a criminal record check. Recently applied for a Non-B at Singapore to enable a work permit and they never cared to ask where I hide the bodies and they have a reputation of being the hardest of the local Thai legations. They certainly don't ask visa-exempt entrants and border runners either.

Exactly, the only visas this is done for are the O-A or O-X visas AFAIK.

1 hour ago, sanemax said:

Did you read that correctly ?

What it seems to say is that the prisoner may decide not to return to the USA because he may have to spend more time in jail in the USA , than he would in the Country that he is in .

   He would have to serve the full sentence in the USA rather than possibly getting a sentence reduction in Thailand , 

Of course this is the case, by my edit I did mean to imply that he could well end up serving longer, apologies for not making this clear.

19 minutes ago, Easy Come Easy Go said:

I don't fully understand the practices and laws regarding extradition. This guy has been sentenced and jailed for murder in the US, so if he is convicted here and in fact does get sent back home, will get get a second murder sentence there, and most likely life without parole considering it is the US, where normally one murder charge is life or the death sentence..?

If convicted in a Thai court, then he MAY be eligible to go back to a US prison within the prisoner exchange system after a certain period of time, the US would have to honour whatever sentence the Thai courts handed out in that case.

The US courts could not try him for this offense.

Edit: I stand corrected, it seems that the US system will actually review the case after transfer and decide how long they should remain in prison for etc.

https://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/criminal-oeo/legacy/2014/06/06/americans-arrested.pdf

21 minutes ago, charmonman said:

Maybe they should start sharing this information on criminal records more widely then. At least do a criminal record check before giving people visas and maybe require a visa from everybody (forget the 30 day visa free entry thing).

Idon't disagree, but doing away with the visa exempt entry would be a huge trade off from Thailand's point of view, possibly missing out on millions of tourists per year, a bit extreme for what is a few events in reality and it wouldn't necessarily resolve the issue anyway, even folks with no criminal record can get violent.

Even doing criminal record checks on every single visa applicant would be detrimental, as this takes time to do.

3 minutes ago, Happyman58 said:

So the question is How this guy get a visa when he had a record to get into Thailand? 

Quite simply because Thailand does not check any criminal activity, the only Thai visa that requires the applicant to provide a criminal record check is the O-A type visas and even that isn't exactly perfect, it would prove that the applicant had no criminal history in their own country, they could well have one in another country though!

It isn't a perfect world, to track every known criminal in every country, going back a lifetime, that every country had access to, would be a huge task.

6 hours ago, norrska said:

you obviously don't know how it works, and since you didn't know it even existed outside your own sphere of knowledge until minutes ago, I will give you a pass on this one.  Everyday is a learning day, so enjoy!

It is going off topic, but APIS would NOT have stopped this guy from flying from the US nor would it have stopped him from entering Thailand.

The airline would have sent certain passenger information to the Thai Immigration, who would have ran checks to ensure that he was not banned or blacklisted from entering Thailand, this is automated and would only have checked the Thai databases, it does not and cannot do any type of 'worldwide' background criminal checks.

The same would be in reverse for a Thai ex. convict visiting USA, contrary to popular belief, there simply isn't this huge database of criminal records for every country in the world, the only 2 countries that currently share this information at border controls are the US and Canada, the only time this would come out for a person traveling without a visa is if the receiving country suspected that there was something not right and requested the data through the correct diplomatic channels.

Thailand only require criminal record checks for the O-A visa.

As the OP's friend has entered using a non-b visa and unless he intends on getting a an extension of stay, then he really doesn't have to anything at all, he has his 90 day entry already and no one will question this at all, a non-b is not only issued for working, it can be issued for other business reasons.

However, if he intends on applying for an extension of stay based on a dependent, immigration will most likely need the visa category changed to non-o and this would be better done sooner rather than later.

21 minutes ago, Briggsy said:

However, if this complicates a huge bung or even a small one, it won't be released.

It certainly is very suspect, especially when you add in the 'friendly' press coverage from certain Thai media.

One thing is for sure, the truth, regardless of what it is, will never come out, likely this will be like most cases, loads of noise to start with, then total silence.

15 minutes ago, pumpjack said:

every bar in pattaya must have CCTV covering all areas inc outside on roadway

 

where to hell is the CCTV  !!!!!  

Agreed, as it IS law for every bar / entertainment venue to have CCTV, despite what others have wrote, however, we are all speculating that the CCTV was not working, or has been erased etc. 

There may be perfectly good CCTV coverage that captured the incident and has been viewed / retained by the police for all we know, the fact is, we simply do not know, they do not release all the available information to the general public, unless it is of some sort of benefit, i.e. needed to identify suspects etc.

Both of my ex. wife's sisters were pregnant by the age of 15, both did what a lot of them do in this situation, dumped the children on to Mum & Dad almost as soon as they were born, both sisters went on to produce a further 2 each before they were 20, all different fathers!

So even though the first ones may have been due to a lack of education, the following ones were certainly not, as they had already seen the consequences!

A lot of the time the issue is it is just so easy to dump the babies on to Mum & Dad and just carry on, harsh but true.

To be fair, my ex. wife did have to look after our 2 sons, but think that was more because she knew that was what was expected and I was there to pay for it all!

Thai Criminal Code regarding self defense http://library.siam-legal.com/thai-law/criminal-code-criminal-liability-sections-66-72/

12 minutes ago, AmericanSafety said:

Sorry ab out that. Yeah, we all left BKK. Wife & daughters live in Thailand; i flew in to meet them. Wife came up with daughters from Jomtien with only the US passports.

No worries, interesting though, as they must have flown out of BKK using their US passports then?

10 minutes ago, fxe1200 said:

I remember, shortly after he took over  the Koh Tao double murder case, he bought shares  for 7.500.000 THB. I can imagine, where that money came from.

shares.pdf

If what you posted is correct, he actually bought 7.5 Billion shares at the cost of 208,333,333.333 Baht?

Mr.Somyot Poompanmoung 7,500,000,000 Shares at 0.036 Baht per share.

20 hours ago, MaeJoMTB said:

Don't ever tell Thai immigration you have two passports.

Leave on the US passports .............. then return on the Thai passports.

For sure, as I have always said!

3 minutes ago, wealthychef said:

Roger that, thanks for the help man, sorry if I sound a bit grumpy after hours of chasing this down.  I should mention the price they quoted was 12,000 baht.  Plus the application fees. 

To be honest, I do not see the advantage of you using an agent, apart from them perhaps assisting you to get the application correct, I do not think it will save you that much time really, a retirement extension is the easiest of all to do.

I extend my stay based on working here and this is handled by an agent employed by the company, it still requires me to be at CW before they open, as they will not issue a queue number without the Farang being there and also have to be present when the IO checks all the paperwork (there is a lot!) plus wait for the passport after that.

The only advantages (aside from documentation) I see from my side are the fact the agent gets there very early and gets in to the queue, which even by 7am can be over 150, the other advantage is the re-entry permit, they normally let me just show my face for a minute or two, then the agent does the waiting for that part, but that probably only saves 30 minutes or so.

As a percentage of the year's extension, then it isn't a lot of time in the big picture.

20 minutes ago, Hupaponics said:

 

I honestly don't think your son is on overstay on his US passport. When he got the Thai passport, the record of him entering Thailand on the US passport was deleted/erased [EDIT canceled (was the word I was looking for) ]. He stays legally in Thailand now.

However, exiting Thailand on the US passport would make a problem. Not because overstay, but rather for not being registered in the system.

This does not happen at all, if a Thai with dual citizenship enters Thailand on their foreign passport, then this will stay in the immigration system regardless.

What could not happen is that they get banned for an overstay, as they would be a Thai citizen regardless, it is debatable regarding if they would have to pay a fine for overstay or not.

There would be no way for immigration to link an entry in to Thailand using a foreign passport to the issuing of a new Thai passport by MFA, they may well be able to make the link at the departure point, but given the use of e-gates for Thai's now, then that is highly doubtful.

At the end of the day, as has been stated several times already, a Thai dual citizen should only use their Thai passport for entering and departing Thailand, it makes absolutely no sense not to do this.

Basically, if a Thai enters Thailand on a foreign passport, renews their Thai passport and then departs Thailand on their Thai passport, the overstay on the foreign passport would remain in the system, however, so long as they never use the foreign passport to enter Thailand again, then it is extremely unlikely that this would ever come out.

3 minutes ago, Koratjohn77 said:

Wait you're using the Chaengwattana immigration office no wonder that's not the right office they only handle Bangkok immigration downtown only.  You can still use TSL at Bangkok immigration

There is no downtown immigration office in Bangkok, this closed years ago, everybody in the Bangkok catchment area must go to Chaengwattana immigration office.

1 minute ago, Koratjohn77 said:

Isn't either income or savings?  A minimum of 40,000 baht a month or 400,000 baht in the bank?  For me the monthly income requirements is no problem at all I make a lot per month but my account balance fluctuates so I'm only using my monthly income.  Can you go by monthly income for a retirement visa?  What is the monthly income requirement if so?  

Retirement is 65,000 per month or 800,000 in the bank OR a combination of both.

22 hours ago, wealthychef said:

need to extend my permission to stay as well as permission to exit and enter at will.  You have just made things more confusing for me.  Definitely the visa expires at end of Feb.  Are you saying I don't need to renew that

22 hours ago, wealthychef said:

Thank you for the clarification.  You are incorrect about one thing:  I am renewing my visa, as well as applying for an extension of stay.  I'm actually doing both because yes I have plans to leave the country.  

Thankfully the OP does now understand the terminology.

If there was ever a shining example of why people should understand and term things correctly, then it is the two quotes, had the OP not posted on here, then there is a very good chance that things would have gone badly wrong for him.

7 minutes ago, Koratjohn77 said:

 If that's true about extensions for retirement visas man I want to switch visas as soon as I can!  That would be awesome.  Can you please confirm that because I honestly never knew that being on a marriage visa.

As Ubonjoe has clearly stated, a retirement extension is normally completed in one day if all the paperwork is correct, you MUST be 50 years old or above to apply, there are no exceptions, so you can swap in another 5 years.