Interrogated and threatened at Suvarnabhumi — Risk or hot air?

[jackspade]

Over the past 4 years I have traveled to Thailand 3 times.  I would typically stay for approximately a year and make tourist visa runs to stay in the country (as thousands have been doing without issue), and then I would return home for a period of about a year in the US.  The last time I left Thailand was in January 2017, and I stayed in the US for a year working. I was not present in Thailand for a period of over 12 months, and just came back in January.

 

This time, I am interviewing with companies in BKK to secure full-time employement (legally, of course). But upon returning to Thailand in January 2018, I was taken out of line by customs (probably due to them seeing past visa-run visas, sat down at a desk, and asked many questions.  They asked to see photos of me and my girlfriend, and I offered up my Facebook profile as evidence of innocence, knowing I had nothing incriminating there.  They called my girlfriend on the phone and told her that I risked not being allowed in the country again. To my face, they said that I was now (something changed?) allowed a maximum of 180 days in the Kingdom per year (2 tourist visits, basically) on tourist visas.

I need to travel to Europe to do some work in a couple of weeks, and I'll be gone about month.  Obviously, my fear is that I will face more of the same on my next re-entry.

 

I have spent less than 2 months out of the last 14 months in Thailand.  If I was doing visa runs in my past, I'm not doing them now, and I am in negotiations to start working for a company in BKK (legally, with a work permit) when I get back from Europe.

 

My question is, should I be genuinely concerned about being turned away when I get back from Europe in April?  Should I put all my efforts into procuring some other type of visa before I get back from Europe?

I ask because it seems not uncommon to hear all sorts of hot air and threats from officials in the absence of incriminating evidence...

Thanks in advance.

[ezzra]

If i were you, time for a new passport, clean slade, no history unless they go looking for it

but having a passport laden with in and out stamps, nowadays, get those guys hot under

to collar.... 

[bkk6060]

6 minutes ago, ezzra said:

If i were you, time for a new passport, clean slade, no history unless they go looking for it

but having a passport laden with in and out stamps, nowadays, get those guys hot under

to collar.... 

Gosh, I could be wrong but isn't that info. captured in their system via computer?

[BritTim]

Most immigration officials at Suvarnabhumi would not subject you to this. On your next entry, you will most likely be fine. For safety, ensure you come back with an actual visa, have the required 20,000 baht equivalent in cash, and have documentary proof of your ability to live here on overseas sources of finance.

[BritTim]

1 minute ago, bkk6060 said:

Gosh, I could be wrong but isn't that info. captured in their system via computer?

Yes, and all immigration officials can easily see it on their screens. However, many here believe officials are swayed more by the stamps in your passport than the history shown on their computer screen. I am not currently of that opinion, but cannot say for sure.

[elviajero]

20 minutes ago, jackspade said:

My question is, should I be genuinely concerned about being turned away when I get back from Europe in April? 

Yes. Although the chances of actually being denied entry are small.

 

21 minutes ago, jackspade said:

Should I put all my efforts into procuring some other type of visa before I get back from Europe?

Yes, if you want immigration off your back.

[elviajero]

14 minutes ago, ezzra said:

If i were you, time for a new passport, clean slade, no history unless they go looking for it

but having a passport laden with in and out stamps, nowadays, get those guys hot under

to collar.... 

A new passport will, almost certainly, not help.

 

It would make it more likely for someone to get scrutinised because the IO will see an ID match, have to manually confirm the linked passport, and immediately see the past history.

[bkk6060]

27 minutes ago, BritTim said:

Yes, and all immigration officials can easily see it on their screens. However, many here believe officials are swayed more by the stamps in your passport than the history shown on their computer screen. I am not currently of that opinion, but cannot say for sure.

 

I was stopped and questions a few years back.  On my next entry there was a notation in the computer about that prior interview. Just saying, which is why I asked about the passport. 

OK, thanks.

[DipStick]

To the OP,  you state you were taken aside by "Customs" and interviewed about your Thai history. I would be interested to hear if the "Immigration Officers" checked your baggage for contraband.

Slightly pedantic I accept, but Customs and Immigration are two separate identities.

[jackspade]

27 minutes ago, bkk6060 said:

 

I was stopped and questions a few years back.  On my next entry there was a notation in the computer about that prior interview. Just saying, which is why I asked about the passport. 

OK, thanks.

Can you describe what happened on your next entry when they saw the prior interview?  Did they give you more flak or consider the issue taken care of by that prior interview?

[jackspade]

16 minutes ago, DipStick said:

To the OP,  you state you were taken aside by "Customs" and interviewed about your Thai history. I would be interested to hear if the "Immigration Officers" checked your baggage for contraband.

Slightly pedantic I accept, but Customs and Immigration are two separate identities.

 

Thank you for the correction. I should have said "Immigration" rather than customs.

[berybert]

Your post doesn't make much sense. 

You have been to Thailand 3 times in the past 4 years, but have not been here for over a year, which means you spent 3 years living in Thailand doing border runs. 

Not really surprising you got stopped.

[BuckBee]

4 hours ago, ezzra said:

If i were you, time for a new passport, clean slade, no history unless they go looking for it

but having a passport laden with in and out stamps, nowadays, get those guys hot under

to collar.... 

 

4 hours ago, bkk6060 said:

Gosh, I could be wrong but isn't that info. captured in their system via computer?

Not all as easily seen on their screens as you might be thinking, I seen the counter screens when pulled aside for questioning and reason pulled was type O's and couple tourists all looking back to back in the passport as officer was picking page spot stamp me in, they had go to another terminal to print out history and even that skipped parts  and they had go away again for over 30minutes verify dates and time span not in thailand from my passport entries/exits, new passport does have benefits but indeed not a magic trick .

Sounds to me OP had incorrect remarks from officers, no such rule on 180days, only rule is 2 visa exempts a year at land borders.

These days if you got history you best picking up a tourist visa before arriving and making some effort on passport renewing or at least do due diligence of rules if coming in on visa exempt and have onward travel ticket and the required funds meets scrutiny rules along with smile and polite attitude.

swampy and old donny airports are known for this scare tactic and stating rules that don't exist .

I can see a rule on setv allowance per annum coming in though as it is method used for most penniless boiler room type workers, fortunately numbers of western illegal workers has fallen massively as can be seen by empty and closed down visa run vans/services and less penniless westerners at borders bragging about telesales scams and bonus while not really having 2 satangs to rub together  ...

[BuckBee]

2 hours ago, berybert said:

Your post doesn't make much sense. 

You have been to Thailand 3 times in the past 4 years, but have not been here for over a year, which means you spent 3 years living in Thailand doing border runs. 

Not really surprising you got stopped.

Not so surprising he got stopped especially if lot of previous entries visa exempt and fact his passport rubbing it in their face even if entry counter terminal not flagging anything .

What is annoying though as total bu115hit threats/information from immigration officers.

I do believe some of these OP's have worse history than saying but still the immigration handling of these issues at the countries 2 main airports is shocking but not surprising as I seen it few times with my own eyes ...

[berybert]

2 minutes ago, BuckBee said:

Not so surprising he got stopped especially if lot of previous entries visa exempt and fact his passport rubbing it in their face even if entry counter terminal not flagging anything .

What is annoying though as total bu115hit threats/information from immigration officers.

I do believe some of these OP's have worse history than saying but still the immigration handling of these issues at the countries 2 main airports is shocking but not surprising as I seen it few times with my own eyes ...

Living 3 years on tourist visa's isn't being a tourist, its called living in the country.

[scubascuba3]

Not all as easily seen on their screens as you might be thinking, I seen the counter screens when pulled aside for questioning and reason pulled was type O's and couple tourists all looking back to back in the passport as officer was picking page spot stamp me in, they had go to another terminal to print out history and even that skipped parts  and they had go away again for over 30minutes verify dates and time span not in thailand from my passport entries/exits, new passport does have benefits but indeed not a magic trick .
Sounds to me OP had incorrect remarks from officers, no such rule on 180days, only rule is 2 visa exempts a year at land borders.
These days if you got history you best picking up a tourist visa before arriving and making some effort on passport renewing or at least do due diligence of rules if coming in on visa exempt and have onward travel ticket and the required funds meets scrutiny rules along with smile and polite attitude.
swampy and old donny airports are known for this scare tactic and stating rules that don't exist .
I can see a rule on setv allowance per annum coming in though as it is method used for most penniless boiler room type workers, fortunately numbers of western illegal workers has fallen massively as can be seen by empty and closed down visa run vans/services and less penniless westerners at borders bragging about telesales scams and bonus while not really having 2 satangs to rub together  ...

The mystery 180 day rule has been mentioned a few times now so some IOs seem to have been told to look for it. Also i see loads of visa run vans full when i do it

[bkk6060]

3 hours ago, jackspade said:

Can you describe what happened on your next entry when they saw the prior interview?  Did they give you more flak or consider the issue taken care of by that prior interview?

Sure, I had been coming in on exempt many times and was warned to get a Visa. This was at Don Meaung. I did in fact get a retirement Visa.   

The IO at Suvarniboom who spoke very good English while looking at his computer screen made some comment about the prior warning and the fact good now I had a Visa.

Just saying there was obviously some notation in my file in their system about the prior warning.

[BuckBee]

55 minutes ago, berybert said:

Living 3 years on tourist visa's isn't being a tourist, its called living in the country.

Depends what you doing, if leisure and tourism type activity it pretty much tourism.

No rules exist stop you coming and going on setv's and if you have real money in bank you don't get much issue getting visas issued or stamped in even if need a chat first .

Who do get hassle a lot and make the matters worse for all is the illegal working westerners with bad manners and bad credit ...

[BuckBee]

37 minutes ago, scubascuba3 said:

 

 

The mystery 180 day rule has been mentioned a few times now so some IOs seem to have been told to look for it. Also i see loads of visa run vans full when i do it

The mystery 180 day rule is an old rule that finished long ago, vans nothing like use to be, some companies  had 4 vans in convoy or upgraded to tour bus as dealing with 50+ numbers a day 7 days a week .

Fortunately it has improved but obviously not stopped fully but numbers are down massively and even those who do stick around illegally struggle do it long term between low pay of illegal work and more hassle/cost with visas unless married to a thai .

[darrendsd]

7 hours ago, BritTim said:

However, many here believe officials are swayed more by the stamps in your passport than the history shown on their computer screen

I can say from my experience today that this is certainly not true

[BritTim]

6 hours ago, BuckBee said:

The mystery 180 day rule is an old rule that finished long ago

I do not think there has ever been a 180-day rule per se. What I recall in a limit of 90 days out of each 6 months on visa exempt entries. This was rescinded because it was too difficult for immigration officers to apply without help from immigration's computer system (help which was unavailable). It was at a time when a visa exempt entry only gave you a 15-day entry, so a lot of stamps needed to be examined to figure out if the 90-day limit had been reached.

 

I have been suspicious for a while that (similar to the alert immigration officials receive when someone has 6 visa exempt entries) there might be an alert for people who have spent near continuous 180-day periods in Thailand on tourist entries. I have no proof for this suspicion (and could be completely wrong) but most officials are not going to take the trouble of doing this kind of calculation manually. I find it curious that this "180-day rule" has started being cited regularly over the last year or so. If I am correct about the alert, it is only supposed to prompt the official to subject the traveler to greater scrutiny. It does not imply the traveler has done anything wrong.

[lkv]

34 minutes ago, BritTim said:

I have been suspicious for a while that (similar to the alert immigration officials receive when someone has 6 visa exempt entries) there might be an alert for people who have spent near continuous 180-day periods in Thailand on tourist entries. I have no proof for this suspicion (and could be completely wrong) but most officials are not going to take the trouble of doing this kind of calculation manually. I find it curious that this "180-day rule" has started being cited regularly over the last year or so. If I am correct about the alert, it is only supposed to prompt the official to subject the traveler to greater scrutiny. It does not imply the traveler has done anything wrong.

Tim, I have stated this before.

I don't have the patience to count again but i did count the exact number of days.At some point i was at 230 or 240.

I have done at least one entry past the 180 day mark.

In 2017 I spent 9-10 months out of 12 in Thailand on SETVs.

 

Im back now in 2018 with a fresh passport and the first SETV from my home country.

 

Yes, I do travel back to Europe twice a year so some of the SETVs are also from my home country (if that matters), but i spend way more than 180 days every year here.

[BritTim]

1 hour ago, lkv said:

Tim, I have stated this before.

I don't have the patience to count again but i did count the exact number of days.At some point i was at 230 or 240.

I have done at least one entry past the 180 day mark.

In 2017 I spent 9-10 months out of 12 in Thailand on SETVs.

 

Im back now in 2018 with a fresh passport and the first SETV from my home country.

 

Yes, I do travel back to Europe twice a year so some of the SETVs are also from my home country (if that matters), but i spend way more than 180 days every year here.

Sure, and there is nothing wrong with what you are doing. Many have successfully used 10 visa exempt entries without ever being challenged. It depends on the immigration official you encounter, your appearance, your behavior, the pattern of your entries, your age, the length of the queue at immigration, whether the official argued with his wife that morning, and a host of other considerations whether an alert prompts the official to give you the third degree.

[buick]

has anyone that passed this type of interview been stopped a second time ?  i played the visa exempt/tourist visa game for 10 yrs, staying about 8 months/yr in thailand.  about 5 yrs through, i was stopped, interviewed, etc...  mainly about work (i was 45 at the time, i retired at 40).  i explained i was retired and let through but told to get tourist visas.  but after a couple years, they allowed visa exempt entries to be extended 30 days and i got lazy on the tourist visas and came in twice a year visa exempt + an extension for a 60 day stay (plus another entry per year using a tourist visa ).  i carried 20,000thb plus an outbound ticket on every entry (during the last couple years).  i was never stopped again.  i got the non imm O when i turned 50 last year.

 

there seem to be alot of us who were stopped once, but i haven't read a report of someone getting stopped twice.

 

[pearciderman]

14 hours ago, BuckBee said:

fortunately numbers of western illegal workers has fallen massively as can be seen by empty and closed down visa run vans/services and less penniless westerners at borders bragging about telesales scams and bonus while not really having 2 satangs to rub together  ...

 

The only way you would know this, is if you too were one of the "border runners!

[MaeJoMTB]

19 hours ago, BritTim said:

Yes, and all immigration officials can easily see it on their screens. However, many here believe officials are swayed more by the stamps in your passport than the history shown on their computer screen. I am not currently of that opinion, but cannot say for sure.

New passport =  new passport number  = new Thai immigration computer account.

 

[ubonjoe]

10 minutes ago, MaeJoMTB said:

New passport =  new passport number  = new Thai immigration computer account.

 

No it does not. They will link his histroy from the old passport the first time he enters the country with a new passport.

This has been discussed on this forum many times.

[KiChakayan]

12 hours ago, darrendsd said:

I can say from my experience today that this is certainly not true

This is an old debate. As long as we don't know what the actual mouvements search specifications are we can't really answer this. But we could easily image a worst (or best case?) scenario where for optically readable passports they perform systematically one search based on full name + DOB, hence retrieving all your mouvements available on their database. I think I mentioned previously that they came up with my prior mouvements under Australian passport while I was entering with my French one, which I had to use for my Non O-A.

[Formaleins]

19 hours ago, ezzra said:

If i were you, time for a new passport, clean slade, no history unless they go looking for it

but having a passport laden with in and out stamps, nowadays, get those guys hot under

to collar.... 

Agree, plus you might want to get a new noddy Holder to put you new passport in.

[JAG]

15 hours ago, BuckBee said:

Depends what you doing, if leisure and tourism type activity it pretty much tourism.

No rules exist stop you coming and going on setv's and if you have real money in bank you don't get much issue getting visas issued or stamped in even if need a chat first .

Who do get hassle a lot and make the matters worse for all is the illegal working westerners with bad manners and bad credit ...