Police preparing speedy immigration process

[wealthychef]

I am grateful they are making this effort and really applaud them for it.  I'm rooting for you Thailand!  Don't screw this one up.  ????  I admit to being a bit skeptical but hey, even a blind dog finds a bone sometimes  right?  

[IamNoone88]

After 14 years, this is the first time I have ever seen "Police" and "Speedy" in the same sentence! Its like the same poles of two magnets being pushed together ......

[hhinhh]

It does not necessarly need more staff. An easier process could do much better. Why fill out these old fashioned arrival papers? I have entered Thailand so many times with the same passport and every time they take my photo. All is stored in my electronic readable passport. Using modern technique could cut immigration process by half at least and save cost for staff too.

[hhinhh]

It does not necessarly need more staff. An easier process could do much better. Why fill out these old fashioned arrival papers? I have entered Thailand so many times with the same passport and every time they take my photo. All is stored in my electronic readable passport. Using modern technique could cut immigration process by half at least and save cost for staff too.

[atyclb]

1 hour ago, madmitch said:

Someone mentioned the e-arrival card but more and more countries are moving to e-visas. All the info is submitted online in advance so when you arrive in the country the immigration process is simple. Dodgy characters can be eliminated at source. Yes, it's no doubt expensive to implement, but a fee is obviously charged to offset the costs. I don't think a 1000 baht fee, for example, would put off tourists, especially if it were dual entry, and the 30 day stamp would effectively be redundant.

 

Australia has such a system and Immigration there was all automated; I didn't see an Immigration Officer. I have just got a Sri Lankan e-visa and it'll be interesting to see how simple that is when I go in a couple of weeks.

 

One problem I see is that Thailand is the world hub of rubber stamps. A passport which isn't full of stickers and stamps is surely not the Thai way, though it could mean mine would actually make it to its expiry date for the first time since I've been here!

 

 

 

entering colombo airport is easy. the line to check in on return flight was very slow despite few passengers.  good waves

[orchidfan]

Airports are largely funded by landing fees and other air navigation charges so ATC is constantly pressured to "pack them in". The higher the arrival rate (and corresponding departure rate) the happier the bean counters are at the various Airport Authorities.

Unfortunately that high arrival rate which they so dearly want results in big crowds rolling up to Immigration.

Human resources has to deal with this. It all has to be coordinated and staffed correctly 

[jethro69]

2 hours ago, RayD said:

 

Perhaps next low season they can have a jolly to Australia to see how an efficient immigration system works.

 

IO: "Do you have a criminal background?"

"Sorry Sir, I didn't know it's still necessary."

????????

[tandor]

3 hours ago, Kerryd said:

I often wondered when I would get to an Immigration queue and see 3 plane loads of people lined up and half the Immigration desks unmanned, and then see 2 more planeloads of people arrive just behind me.

 

I know they schedule planes from different parts of the world to arrive in different "blocks". For instance, every time I have flown from North America, no matter which airline I flew on (China Air, Japan Air, Cathay) I would always arrive in Bangkok between 11pm and 2 am. When I flew from the Middle East (Thai or Emirates or Gulf Air), I would always arrive between 7-9 am.
(I suspect they do that so they can have different groups of Immigration officers that speak different languages on hand, depending on what "region" is scheduled to arrive.)

 

But they know, well in advance, how many flights are scheduled to arrive and how many passengers to expect (roughly). They also know how long it takes to process the average passenger, so they can calculate how many IOs are needed for each shift. 

Then it's just a matter of  - do they cut back on the number of IOs and increase the wait times (maybe to save money on salaries by having fewer IOs on shift) or do they increase the number and reduce the wait times, but then have a bunch of IOs sitting around doing nothing for hours on end ?

If they tinkered with the formula and adjusted the arrival times of the flights, they could probably increase the efficiency of the process greatly without a significant increase in costs. Not going to always work out due to weather issues and other delays that could still result in too many planes arriving too close together, but overall it could be an improvement.

 

Also keep in mind, when Swampy first opened it was expected that they wouldn't hit their max capacity (of arrivals/departures) for something like 10 years. However, they surpassed those numbers within a couple years and had to start Phase 1 of the expansion years ahead of schedule, and then start Phase 2 soon after that (and now are talking about yet another expansion).

I looked up the arrival numbers a couple months ago and except for 2 small downturns (after the tsunami and after the last coup) the numbers of arrivals (nationwide) have been skyrocketing every year.
I think Swampy was expecting to hit an annual peak of 10 million arrivals/departures (passengers, not planes) within 10 years but passed that within 3. 
The facilities are being "swamped" and there is no easy, cheap or fast fix to it. 

 

More IOs manning the desks would be a good start though.

...if your coming in on a long haul flight, why can't the bulk of your processing be done automatically with data they hold, data from the passenger manifest..surely most prominent countries could engineer such a system, say controlled by Interpol..i wish for this.

[Rawnthai]

Too bad they do put forth effort on a daily/yearly basis.

[Vacuum]

1 hour ago, Bournville said:

Exactly! I open my passport to my OA visa.. Yet the bkk IO flip through every page.. Twice! It's insane! What's he hoping to find? 

A 500 baht note?

[Gold Star]

The special training should include the many telltale indications when planes land in order to staff the empty booths:

 

1) The water pressure drops due to all the flushing toilets at once

2) Facebook suddenly gets slow due to heavy internet usage from arriving passengers switching on their phones

3) Noise suddenly coming from the luggage carousels spinning up

4) Arrival floor outside customs becomes jammed full with people waiting to pick up 'handsum men'

5) The sudden appearance of any flag or stuffed animal on a stick

Any others?

 

[Chongalulu]

4 hours ago, HiSoLowSoNoSo said:

What about changing the whole system, to a system similar to Singapores? Even with more staff the system they use is still too time consuming. 

Because Singapore is highly intelligent,functional,organised and plans properly.......

[jrjrjr]

They all look like nobel prize !

 

 

[Russell17au]

Come on now, have some respect for the Thai immigration Police when they say they are going to speed things up at the airports. It is an easy task all they do is open all the booths at the interrnational airports and to man these booths they take 2 IO's from each Immigration office with the exception of Chiang Mai where they take 3 officers so to stop all those whinging farangs about how long it takes to do an extension

[akirasan]

Did a border run yesterday, only took them 10 minutes to find my full page visa instead of the usual 15. 

Things sure have improved. 

[Kerryd]

51 minutes ago, tandor said:

...if your coming in on a long haul flight, why can't the bulk of your processing be done automatically with data they hold, data from the passenger manifest..surely most prominent countries could engineer such a system, say controlled by Interpol..i wish for this.

Actually - they do. When the doors of the plane are closed (at the departure terminal) the passenger manifest is sent to the arrival country which (in most cases) is then automatically scanned and any suspicious names are flagged.

 

However, certain things still have to be verified manually. They haven't gotten to the point where a machine can read your photo and compare it to your actual face for a match (yet) and certain information isn't recorded on the passenger manifest so it has to be examined physically (i.e. for any "denied entry" stamps or damaged pages, etc).

 

One day they will get to a point when information can be digitally encoded on a chip in the passport which can then be read automatically, but you will probably still need humans as there are always those "special" people that have "special" problems that a machine simply couldn't deal with.

[BigT73]

2 hours ago, saltire1 said:

  I was greeted by a female IO who, on looking at my passport pic and then at me pointed at my passport pic and said "young man" and then at me with "old man" followed by a huge smile.  Must admit that cheered me up. 

Then you got to Pattaya and became "hansum man" :)

[Kerryd]

2 hours ago, Bournville said:

Exactly! I open my passport to my OA visa.. Yet the bkk IO flip through every page.. Twice! It's insane! What's he hoping to find? 

Actually, they are probably looking for things like "denied entry" stamps as well as previous entry/departure stamps, as well as the most recent Re-entry stamp (if applicable).

I've noticed they also try to put the newest Entry stamp in a place where there's room for a matching Departure stamp to be placed (rather than have one stamp on one page and the other one 5-6 pages further along in the passport).

They also like to examine passports for signs of damage and/or alteration (like if someone tried to remove a page that had a "denied entry" stamp on it). There are a lot of people out there with "altered" passports trying to sneak around for various reasons. A part of the IO's job is to try and catch those people before they get into the country.

[Lacessit]

9 hours ago, stanleycoin said:

I would say, make sure they are all staffed with female immigration officers.

they tend to be more efficient.

I always look for a booth staffed by female officers.

Good job ladies 

 

I assess the immigration officers by weight. The slim trim ones, male or female, seem to be more focused and effective than the fat slugs.

[josephbloggs]

2 minutes ago, Lacessit said:

I assess the immigration officers by weight. The slim trim ones, male or female, seem to be more focused and effective than the fat slugs.

I look for the one with the shortest queue - seems to work.

[observer90210]

Assuming that they can/do speed up the process ?....why not maintain the process all the year long and avoid disgraful 1 hour queues on immigration lines on Arrival and Departure at Suvarnabhumi ?

[Lacessit]

1 minute ago, josephbloggs said:

I look for the one with the shortest queue - seems to work.

Murphy's Law being what it is, the shortest queue sometimes is the slowest.

[Russell17au]

Didn't "Big Joke" say something about employing 1000 more iO's. Maybe, just maybe he has something on his mind in trying to fix things, but time will tell. As they say "Rome was not built in a day" Give the man a chance and we might end up with something decent instead of the way it is now. But everyone wants everything changed now, right now.

[ukrules]

5 hours ago, Kerryd said:

 

I know they schedule planes from different parts of the world to arrive in different "blocks". For instance, every time I have flown from North America, no matter which airline I flew on (China Air, Japan Air, Cathay) I would always arrive in Bangkok between 11pm and 2 am. When I flew from the Middle East (Thai or Emirates or Gulf Air), I would always arrive between 7-9 am.
(I suspect they do that so they can have different groups of Immigration officers that speak different languages on hand, depending on what "region" is scheduled to arrive.) 

 

Flight schedules are absolutely nothing to do with immigration.

 

[dallen52]

Immigration booths by Nationality. 

They are part of the way there already. 

We can see who causes the problems then.

 

Although I did see a visa waiver one at Phuket recently. 

Plus 8 Chinese gates.

[Daryle]

Unfortunately, the Thai definition of "speedy" is not quite the same as some other peoples'.
Let's hope it can be a success though.

How true, it took me 8 hours to renew my ED visa last week in Bkk. Such understaffing surely reflects on poor management practices which media relations will never resolve.

Sent from my SM-T530 using Tapatalk

[sambum]

"However, he said the speeding up of procedures will not open up opportunities for ill-intentioned groups."

 

You mean like pensioners seeking an annual extension of stay?

[phkauf]

2 hours ago, Kerryd said:

Actually, they are probably looking for things like "denied entry" stamps as well as previous entry/departure stamps, as well as the most recent Re-entry stamp (if applicable).

I've noticed they also try to put the newest Entry stamp in a place where there's room for a matching Departure stamp to be placed (rather than have one stamp on one page and the other one 5-6 pages further along in the passport).

They also like to examine passports for signs of damage and/or alteration (like if someone tried to remove a page that had a "denied entry" stamp on it). There are a lot of people out there with "altered" passports trying to sneak around for various reasons. A part of the IO's job is to try and catch those people before they get into the country.

Exactly on point! What bogles the mind is why they have not yet moved to fingerprint ID like nearly every other country. This alone will help cut down on the fraud. I am sure it is common knowledge amongst criminals that Thailand is an easy place to get in and out of for this reason.

[Psimbo]

One arm of the police cannot manage 11 million traffic tickets, another is speeding up Maybe they should swap jobs.

 

[Psimbo]

2 hours ago, Russell17au said:

Didn't "Big Joke" say something about employing 1000 more iO's. Maybe, just maybe he has something on his mind in trying to fix things, but time will tell. As they say "Rome was not built in a day" Give the man a chance and we might end up with something decent instead of the way it is now. But everyone wants everything changed now, right now.

You really don't get how Thaigeezer works do you? ????