Please keep in mind, they Say the reason for the crackdowns is "illegal working" - because that hurts Thai job-prospects.  Yet they simultaneously allow Millions of foreigners in from Myanmar, Cambodia, etc to take Thai's jobs out from under them.  How many Western visa-runners, are there?  Even if they all worked illegally (teaching English - which 99.9% of Thais literally cannot do), it would not make a dent in job-availability statistics.

 

Which leads to the obvious question - what is the Real Reason they are taking these actions - because the stated-reason is impossible to reconcile with reality.

 

13 hours ago, steve187 said:

but they are abusing the system.it was never designed for long term stayer to use back to back, as the op was doing.

It was originally designed to allow a person to make as entries back-to-back as they wanted Visa-Exempt.  Then they changed the Visa-Exempt rules, a few times, so that is no longer possible to do in-perpetuity.

 

But, the same folks who changed the rules on Visa-Exempts, chose Not to change the rules on Tourist Visas.  So, for the time-being, you can leave and come back with a Tourist-Visa as many times as you like provided you always have 20K Baht to show, and use points-of-entry where the published Laws/Rules are followed.

 

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it matters to me because the constant abuse leads to changes that do impact on others including me, ie the abuse of non imm 'O' multi's issued in consulates, lead to a removal of that visa being issued  by consulates, making it harder for over 50's and married to Thai's from getting that visa.

I am not sure how Non-O's are relevant to the OP's activities.  How were Non-Os being "abused," exactly?  I am aware of the situation with Married-to-Thais using them, and Penang + Singapore have "cracked down" on that - but most others (excepting Immigration, of course) don't demand to see money, in exchange for letting you spend time with your Thai-family.

 

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and the abuse of back to back visa exempt, which forced the 2 only at land crossing, making it harder for people living in Laos and Cambodia close to the border, from visiting Thailand for shopping, hospitals etc,

it has also made it a potential problem for 28 day on 28 day off workers, by being pulled up at immigration.

Yes, it is foolish to stop people repeatedly spending money in Thailand by limiting entries this way.  But from their perspective, the 28x28 workers are "abusing" VE-entry from frequency-of-use.  There are many better solutions to these limits:

• After 2 VE entries in a year, must be out 14 days before each additional.  If so, no problem, no worries, no stress, no 'maybe' about things.
• After 2 VE entries in a year, no extensions of VEs will be permitted

 

And for the general problem:

• Remove the retirement-visa age-restriction
• Remove the "must be employed" and "only available in home-country" restrictions on METVs and Non-OAs.  Docs could be cleared at home-consulates by nearby ones for a fee.  Shipping one's body in an aluminum-tube across the globe to present paperwork for the place you just left, is just plain stupid.
• Sole-Proprietor / Freelance Non-B "outsourcing" visas - all clients must be foreign, and visa-fees will include a min-tax-payment.

Edited October 18, 20178 yr by JackThompson

14 hours ago, steve187 said:

but they are abusing the system.it was never designed for long term stayer to use back to back, as the op was doing

You are implying that the Immigration Act and related Ministerial Orders are badly written, not actually reflecting what the Thai authorities want to happen. Further, the authorities are too incompetent to amend the Act and Orders appropriately. That is a possible interpretation, but I propose a more probable one.

I believe the rules over tourist visas and visa exempt entries reflect what is intended. Thailand does not want to prevent people, in some cases, from living in Thailand indefinitely on tourist visas. They certainly do not want people working here illegally (where that, in itself, is a fuzzy area) and want people who contribute economically without causing trouble. They are perfectly happy with some long stayers on tourist visas. There are no clear definitions of who those people are.

They do have alerts that are issued to immigration officials when the pattern of number of entries and total time spent in Thailand exceeds certain thresholds. Excluding the two visa exempt entries by land per calendar year rule, they do not appear to want to impose any other cast iron limitations. Indeed, some other mooted regulations were shelved or reversed soon after their introduction. Examples are a maximum 90 days per six months on visa exempt entries, and prohibition of border hops for visa exempt entries.

23 hours ago, kingstonkid said:

I thought Walen had a presence on here maybe he can shed some light.  Also, I am sure you are not the first student with this issue have you talked to any of the head people at Walen

Not sure that he would get far with such a course of action if it turns out that this "august" learning establishment is headed by an alter ego of Mr Bean - which would then probably explain why it takes them as long as 4 weeks to complete what should surely be for them a straightforward routine process!

44 minutes ago, OJAS said:

Not sure that he would get far with such a course of action if it turns out that this "august" learning establishment is headed by an alter ego of Mr Bean - which would then probably explain why it takes them as long as 4 weeks to complete what should surely be for them a straightforward routine process!

The delay is getting the paperwork from Ministry of Education. It can takes several weeks to get now. The 4 weeks is not unusual.