Entering Thailand Multiple Times Without Visum

[Dominik]

Hi,

As a Belgian national I can enter Thailand for 30 days without a visum, just as most tourists do.

I am living very close to the border with Myanmar now and I was wondering if I could do without a visum. For me it is no trouble at all to cross the border every 30 days.

At the moment I am still enjoying the comfort of a non-immigrant B visum ("business visa") that I acquired with the help of a subsidiary of the largest holding in Thailand. After they made no efforts to supply me with a work permit however (to much trouble they said, I could also work like that for them) I did not work for them but I stayed in Thailand.

In total I am now about 2 and a half years in Thailand. First using tourist visums, and now the last year using the mentioned business visum. Before that I travelled several times to Thailand for holiday. My passport is full of stamps from Thai immigration that means, and when immigration officers turn back the pages they look a bit strange at me, and ususally start talking among themselves...

In the mean time I provided the funds for my Thai partner to get a small business started and in turn he supports me now so I do not need to work here.

I was planning to stay another year before returning to Belgium. A long holiday that I use for studying and improving my skills before returning to Belgium.

To come back to the original question:

What will happen if I start crossing the border every month like that? I saw a sign at Thai immigration now that said that any person who crosses the border more then 2 times this way need to provide photocopies of every page in his passport plus some extra pictures AND a statement declaring why you want to stay in Thailand...

The only reason I can put on that statement is that I like to be in Thailand more then in Belgium at this time... I do not think this will be a valid reason however.

Before I got my business visum I got already some trouble in Penang when I asked for a tourist visum. They said I was already to long in Thailand and they asked me to provide a financial statement.

So I wonder. Will I get stuck in no-mans land?

Or is this maybe a good time to return to Belgium a bit more early then planned? I do not want to get in troubles or do illegal things. I like to do things the correct way.

Going for another visum does not seem to be a good option. With the new rules I have a feeling that it will be difficult to use that way.

Thanks for any input on this!

[dr_Pat_Pong]

Go and get a proper visa ..a tourist visa in an nearby country and remove all doubts. There is no doubt that a crackdown is happening.

[Guest IT Manager]

Yes I agree. Go get a proper one. The comapny you work for are either lazy or Tdollay. Probably the last. Are they thai or foreign majority owned?

Otherwise left hook the bich at reception and tell it to go to Immigration and fix it. IMHO they will give you the boot as soon as you have done what they were incapable of doing in the first place.

If the CEO is a local he is lining you up to <deleted> you. Give them nothing until you have WP and proper visa, at their expense, the lazy c*nts.

[Dominik]

hmmm... I guess in my long story the actual point got lost because I see no direct answer to my question....

I maybe try to write it in a different way:

1)

I am fed up with going to other countries to get tourist visa's 9excuse me for the strong words). So I do not want to go for that anymore. The consulate and the immigration officers were already very uncomfortable with all my visa's and stamps when I applied the last time for a tourist visa, now more then a year ago. The current policy of the Thai government will not improve that. I expect a lot of trouble when I apply for a tourist visa again, so I do not want to waste the money and time on another trip for that.

2) So my question is: will I get trouble if I cross the border every month without a visum for a 30 day stamp or not? If the answer is "yes" or "maybe", then I simply move back to Belgium a year more early then planned. My Thai partner will follow me some time later. If the answer is "no", then I might try to stay another year using this way. Next week I will also go and talk with the immigration officers here about it to be sure.

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APPENDIX ;-)

About the companies and work-permit story:

I have no intention anymore of working in Thailand, so no need to go back to these companies to complain.

If you read my first post carefully you will know which company I was talking about. The one that ownes about everything in Thailand, including the chicken you eat for lunch. They can get a visum and workpermit in 3 hours if they want because they are BOI and they are the number 1 in Thailand...

But this was not the only one. I tried to work for many serious companies, mostly Thai owned, and everywhere it was the same story. No problem to work for them, "au contraire": they sometimes called me every day to encourage me to start for them. But as soon as I start talking about the papers I get nothing but a smile...

Nobody wants to bother with that. The staff who needs to do the paperwork do not like to talk with the "unfriendly" immigration officers (their words, not mine), and the executives do not want to pay the extra cost and tax. It seemed that I was the one causing problems because I wanted things to be correct. So either they refused, or either they let the whole process go extremely slow (after 6 months the first company I mentioned was still "working on it").

Let me entertain you with the most funny story: with 1 serious company (at that time housed in the famous M-Thai Tower at All Seasons Place) I actually got that far that all required paperwork was done it seemed (that was the paperwork to convert my tourist visum to a business visum).

I went to immigration in BKK together with one of their staff. Their a very friendly immigration officer (everybody in Thailand is always friendly to me) looked at our file and said that everything seemed to be OK, except that they forgot to fill in my salary...

A telephone call to the company to ask if we could fill in the amount ourselves resulted in us having to go back to the company because their was a "major misunderstanding". It seemed they never intended to pay me a salary they told me. It was not because they asked me how much I would like my salary to be that they also agreed on paying me a salary they said. That is the way Thai people negotiate they added to that. They were going to pay me a commission on new projects if there were any... In the mean time I had to work for free...

Needless to say I took my things and went on looking somewhere else... Two months later the company splitted up, and now the remainder is housed in a less glamorous location.

Business visums and work permits are -at this moment- easy for teachers who going to teach at universities or important schools and executives who are sent to Thailand from the mother-company. Anything else in between seems to have trouble!

I am an IT-specialist. In my IT-specialization (Domino groupware) I am in fact one of the worlds top-professionals. But in Thailand the recognition for IT-people is different then in the west. In the west, my job is an executive position, but in Thailand they still consider it a minor supporting technical position and in that position it is not only very difficult to try to change an organization's look at IT, but even more difficult to get the papers done! Everybody here wants IT but nobody wants to pay for it!

Maybe I publish a comic book about my life in Thailand!