News on visa detentions

[DaveYo]

Hey Pablo and all of ya, what are the odds of coming across the very same officers especially in Don Muang international as big as the entry area is which is huge and they have a lot of officers there??  By lucky chance of the draw, I  somehow got the very same officer on entry twice and the buddies on exit!

 :laugh:    :laugh:

:blues:

[Pablo H]

The sequence of numbers you quoted are new to me, all my stamps whether at Don Muang or any other immigration point always start with a letter.

???

[DaveYo]

Well that is odd.  It is possible that in 2001 and 2002 this 0 could be a letter O  .  As you can see here a zero looks different than the letter.  

This is what I got my man.  If I could do so, I would make a file copy and post the picture of my stamps here, but that would not be good due to safety and protection if you know what I mean.

Now I don't know about yours and it would seem very strange indeed if you went thru Don Muang you should have something similar to my kind of stamps, cause I don't think immigrations would go so far as to alter the stamp entrys to create confusion.  My understanding is all in Don Muang officers in immigration have the same stamp deal and their officers are within the same ID sequence.

The purpose is to identify which branch area and location of the entry and exit points thru out thailand.  Say you went thru Cambodia, they would have perhaps a different letter and a certain set of specific numbers to identify those officers in that particular region.  Same might apply to the Malaysia border and to the Burma border.  This is how they centralize their operations to quickly point out who is who and where they are located.  For example say you got a letter J and numbers of 6789 and the stamp shows Malaysia border.  When they look this up that letter might say that is Cambodia border section and you got a Malaysia stamp.  Now that raises the question to the Don Muang Officer and he is wondering what is going on, which then they suspect the stamp is bogus.  

In America, being a citizen they don't stamp my passport of entry or exit.  They scan it which registers itself.  To foreigners they get USA stamps of which I have not seen and of course I have no clue, cause even tho I work at the airport, to make inquirys of such can raise questions of why I am asking such involving security entry points.  Understand.  I can get information but that is hard without raising eyebrows.  On the other hand yes I can if I find the files of my ex who was a Philippino, and I saved some copies from her passport.  I will check it out but that is like over 12 years old.

So, I suppose we both have a nice question in our heads of Thailand security involving the stamps.  My presumption is they have to have some orderly way to identify such in quick manner.  It makes logical sense.

:blues:

[ovenman]

In America, being a citizen they don't stamp my passport of entry or exit.  They scan it which registers itself.  To foreigners they get USA stamps of which I have not seen and of course I have no clue, cause even tho I work at the airport, to make inquirys of such can raise questions of why I am asking such involving security entry points.  

It seems like US Immigrations stopped stamping my passport about five years ago (I'm also an Amercan citizen).  The US immigrations stamp is not all that different from Thailand's inbound immigrations stamp.  It shows port and date of entry, a badge number for the immigrations officer, a place to stamp the "admitted until" date along with the visa classification.  The latter two items were always left blank for US citizens as they also are for arriving Thai citizens on an inbound Thai immigrations stamp.

[Alberta]

I recently made a visa run to Malaysia to obtain an Non-Immigrant O Visa a week ago.  I had many stamps over the past couple of years made by visa runners for the company I was working for. So I had my lawyer take my passport to Immigration in Bangkok to have it checked and to ensure that all of the stamps were okay. Better to resolve any problem in advance than at a border crossing.  This is what I learned on this trip.

No one is being arrested or hassled about legal stamps that correspond to immigration computer entries. The only people arrested are those who have  forged entries or stamps or false passports and rightly so.

I have it from a good source that over a period of only a couple of days a week ago over 100 people who were on visa runs with such discrepancies in their passports were let out the country okay but denied re-entry. So their problems will have to be resolved outside of Thailand in their home countries. Fair enough since a forged entry in a passport can give you a decade in prison anywhere in the world.

The passports of our group were checked against the computer on leaving the country and in one case a man was told that he could be let out of the country but would not be let back in until some discrepacy was resolved. He was told this because the Immigration officer knew we were on a Visa run and would be returning later in the day. The officer kindly offerred him a 10 or 15 day extension to his current visa to give him time to resolve the problem with his embassy in Bangkok - which I thought was very fair. He accepted this offer.

I met an American who had just been refused a tourist visa to Singapore because less than 60 days had lapsed since he left Singapore on his last tourist visa. I don't know whether this denial is in accord with the current regulations in Singapore or not but obviously the writing is on the wall for people who have been abusing the intent of tourist visas and why not?

Relax guys. No need for this wild exageration and speculation that is going on.  

[Axel]

Thanks Alberta, very clear and detailled and fully agree to your own comments in there.  

If I understand the last para referring to SIN, correctly, it was the SIN-government who refused another visa as the previous one was overused, i.e. he must have been staying for the full time granted and wanted to come back immediately. Yes, I can confirm SIN as well as HKG is doing this. You get 30 days in Singapore for "social visit". If you come back immediately for aonther 30 days it can be refused, unless you present extreme good reasons. You will be advised to apply at an embassy for a proper visa for longer stay and other reasons than "social".

[ovenman]

I met an American who had just been refused a tourist visa to Singapore because less than 60 days had lapsed since he left Singapore on his last tourist visa.

Refused a tourist entry *to* Singapore or refused a Thai tourist visa at the Thai embassy in Singapore?  If the latter, this is nothing new.  The Thai embassy in Singapore has frowned on issuing "back-to-back" tourist visas for some time now.

[Noodles]

I have just got back to this forum. My friend has texed me saying two people in front of him at padang basar were taken away, relating to "so called dody stamps".

This news is two days old. Just for info.