Mattd

13 minutes ago, davhend25 said:

Anyway, I'll keep working on this. Thanks again for your kind reply to my problem.

I would definitely try to go back to the immigration office with the form Joe passed to you filled in, you should also take a photo, copies of your passport cover page, TM.6, last entry stamp and extension of stay page, plus some proof of residency, like a bill in your name with the address on it.

As for it be FOC, that depends on the office you apply at, most will charge you for this and even though it is technically free, I see nothing wrong with paying a small fee, after all it does use resources to produce.

Definitely no duty to be paid on a laptop, only VAT.

Do note though, that if the item has a declared value of over 50,000 THB then you may have to register with customs prior to you being able to receive it.

8 minutes ago, ubonjoe said:

As far as I know it has always been a requirement for it to be translated. I can recall several reports of it being needed.

It could depend upon the DLT office you go to.

Quite likely then.

In which case, a residency certificate issued by immigration would be the way to go, far cheaper and less hassle.

17 minutes ago, ubonjoe said:

The proof of address affidavit would have to be translated to Thai and the translation certified by the Department of Consular Affairs.

Is this a new requirement?

I have used residence certificates issued by British Embassy for car ownership and driving license in the past and DLT have accepted these in English with no DCA certification.

13 minutes ago, JohnOFphon said:

So the Immigration Officer lied...

She said. I do not need a re-entry permit.

I have a multiple entry visa.

I can come and go twice a day if I want up to the Admitted to date.

Finished...no reply necessary. 

A reply is very necessary for you to properly understand and for you to keep the non-immigrant entry alive.

The only thing that I can think is that Immigration Officer perhaps misunderstood you.

By your own admission you have an O-A visa (multiple entry) that was issued in February 2017 and this visa is valid until 23rd February 2018 as written on the visas use before date, after the 23rd February 2018 this visa is no longer valid for use, it will have expired.

For you to be able to come and go after the 23rd February and up to your admitted to date in August, then you absolutely must get a reentry permit.

If you do not do this, then you will have to either get another non immigrant visa, or convert a 30 day visa exempt entry in to a non immigrant in order to be able to do the extension of stay.

Just now, JohnOFphon said:

So. Today. The immigration office TODAY told me I was ok until Aug. 5th 2018???

Really.

They lied to me...

Depends on the context, you are OK to STAY in Thailand until that date.

2 minutes ago, JohnOFphon said:

My passport is stamped. "Admitted until Aug. 5th, 2018."

I have been doing 90 day reports on time.

My next report is due is 60 days.

I do not have to do anything other than than the reports.

I have a multiple entry visa. That is the only re-entry permit I need.

If I leave Thailand for any time, and return on or before Aug. 5th, 2018...My passport will be stamped for an additional year from the date of entry. And Multiple Entry will still be included.

90 day reports starting from that date.

NEGATIVE, this is completely wrong.

Your visa will expire on the 23rd February and CANNOT be used for another entry after that date.

Do not mix up the visa expiry date and the permission to stay date, they are not the same thing.

If you leave and enter Thailand after your visa has expired (enter before date) and do not get a reentry permit then you will be admitted for 30 days only.

21 hours ago, 7by7 said:

One fact being that consistently for the 15 years plus I have been taking an interest, around 95% of standard visit visa applications in Bangkok each year have been successful. Based on what I have read on this and similar forums and been told personally, of those that failed many did so because sponsor and/or applicant adjusted the facts to fit what they thought the decision maker wanted to hear rather than tell the simple truth.

This is very good advice and the OP would do well to heed this.

A good percentage of the failures will be due to the application being falsified in some way or another, or appears to the ECO as that.

Be honest in the application and provide the evidence needed.

Just now, glegolo said:

If he leaves Thailand during august 2018, before his O-A VISA expires,

44 minutes ago, JohnOFphon said:

I have a Non O A Multi Entry Visa I got in my home county last Feb. The expiration stamped in the my passport is Feb. 23.

32 minutes ago, JohnOFphon said:

So.....if I leave the country and come back before Aug, 5th....say Aug. 4th. will I get another stamp good until Aug, 4th 2019???? Multi Entry and all??

As Ubonjoe has already pointed out, the answer to this is no.

If you want to maximise your current visa, then you would have to depart and enter Thailand on or before 23rd February 2018, so within the next 4 days.

If you cannot or do not want to do this and do intend on leaving Thailand between 24th February and 5th August 2018 and prior to completing the extension of stay, then it is extremely important that you remember to obtain a re-entry permit BEFORE you depart the country, either at one of the Bangkok airports or at your local immigration office, failure to do this will mean that you would be stamped in for thirty days only using a visa exempt entry (assuming you are from a country that qualifies).

2 hours ago, sananeamk0715 said:

I have 2+1 months single entry tourist visa and my visa will expire on 7 march. But for some reasons I can't leave Thailand before 7 march but I can leave Thailand on 14 march. So which means 7 days later after my visa expire.

Does your VISA expire then OR is it your permission to stay that expires, so the admitted to date on the entry stamp?

24 minutes ago, WhiteHatPhil said:

• 60 days before Oct 19 I must ensure 800,000 baht are in my Thai bank account (or proof of income equivalent)
• 30 days before Oct 19 I must apply for a 1 year extension of stay based on retirement.

If you do make an exit and then an entry before the expiration of your O-A visa (October 18th 2018?), then the above quotes only apply in 2019.

On 2/18/2018 at 2:04 AM, charmonman said:

Put a couple of more hoops in people's way before they can enter and you might end up with fewer complete idiots causing trouble and worse

Yes, but as a percentage of the total visitors, then these complete idiots are not very high and the more hurdles to overcome, the less genuine tourists will bother, as they will take the path of least resistance.

Actually, getting in and out of Mabprachan area has got a lot easier in the last few weeks and there are several options depending on where in Pattaya / Jomtien you want to come out, on the rare occasions that I go to Big C Extra for example, it usually takes about 15 minutes at say 9.30am on a weekday, it is all about choosing the correct route and time.

For the Jomtien / Theprasit areas, then you can use soi 87 / 89 and approach these from Horseshoe point, to go to say Huay Yai / Phoenix area, then cut across past the solar farm and so on.

My friend was renting a small house on Natheekarn Park View, Mabprachan for around 9,000 per month, 2 bedroom, not a lot of garden, wasn't brilliant mind. So there are places available at your budget.

Unfortunately he has gone back to UK already, so cannot ask him for any contact details, maybe worth a drive around and look.

18 hours ago, paulbj2 said:

Before I retired, I used to be a software engineer and the idea that you could spec out, design, code, test and roll out a system like that in six months gave me the biggest laugh of the week so far! If they are looking for a project manager (scapegoat), for 500,000 Baht a month, I wouldn't take the bloody job! 

 

I would say something more like 12 months to prepare the spec and design the system, 12 months to do the coding then a further 12 months to test and debug it and finally another 12 months to rollout the hardware and software to all international airports. 

 

That's a realistic total of four years - not six months. However, this is a civil service job and, based on my experience of working for very large bureaucratic organizations like that, in various parts of the world,  I would say that you need to add 50% - 100% to that timescale to allow for "bureaucratic lag".

 

I guess if you put the whole project in the hands of a decent software house, you might be able to do better than four years but I doubt it and in any case the probably wouldn't do that!

 

 

Whilst I do agree that 6 months will be impossible to achieve, I would have thought that it would take less than four years.

The assumption of that length of time is that it will be a completely new, ground up project that has never been tried before.

The reality is that these systems have been implemented in a lot of countries now and the 'know how' is available at a price, I cannot be 100% certain that the Thai government will employ a good software / hardware company, but I am 90% sure, I know of quite a few farangs that do consultancy work for various government departments, they do outsource this type of thing when they do not have the knowledge in house.

IMHO this is a good idea and most will benefit from it in the end.

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.