Perhaps A New Process For 90-Day Reporting Enforcement?

[Thanyaburi Mac]

Here's what he said:

"Got to Pathum Immigration Office at 0810. About 12 people ahead of me when I got there. When the door opened at 0820 there were about 30 people and it was push and shove. In that case, I shove well! Three people in front of me each got an officer. I was next. Something in Thai stamped on my departure card with that date on it. Very fast, courteous service."

Note that the stamp says he last made the 90-day report on 10 April 2012, and it's on his Departure Card.

Wonder if this is meant to alert Immigration the next time someone departs Thailand for them to check if there's a 90-day receipt in the passport, and if not, FINE baht 2,000-5,000!

Mac

[Mario2008]

Strange, my departure card will be full very soon if they really would do that. In addition, most people report by mail and don't send in their departure card, but a copy. So I don't think this will be pollicy.

[gamini]

Many of us do 90 day report by mail. We only send a copy of the departure card. So what you wrote can not be the case. i.e. if you don't have the 90 day stamp on your departure card it does not mean you have not reported.

[OJAS]

In any event, whether your typical IO at BKK Departures is any more likely to be alerted, through what looks like from the original posting to be a small blue stamp on your departure card (which, of course, is itself blue), to make the necessary diligent checks for 90-day reporting compliance before stamping you out of LOS seems, in practice, questionable....

Edited April 11, 2012 by OJAS

[Maestro]

Thanyaburi Mac, thank you for reporting that novelty. What else, if anything, did your friend get from the immigration officer for his notification of staying longer than 90 days with the form TM.47?

[Badbanker]

At the Cheang Wattana Immigration office for the past 2 times doing my 90 day report, I have been given a barcoded form with my info already filled in. This week when I presented the form they accepted it and informed me they had gone back to the old system of me writing up the form. When I asked about the change they said the big boss was not happy with the present printed barcoded form and wanted for the time being a hand written form.

Here is the printed our 90 day receipt form with a barcode and number on it!

Anyone else have a similar experience?

Edited April 15, 2012 by Maestro
Pixelated part of the attachment.

[lopburi3]

Hand written or the old TM47 Document fill in computer form they have been using for years?

[Badbanker]

Supposedly from my next visit in July, I will have to fill out the form by hand as they gave me an old TM47 to write ahead of time!

[Mario2008]

Believe there is a report from Chiang Mai also indicating immigration will go back to the old form instead of barcode.

Edit: see topic here: http://www.thaivisa....ai-immigration/

Better said the situation is confusing.

[kraxlhuber]

Many of us do 90 day report by mail. We only send a copy of the departure card. So what you wrote can not be the case. i.e. if you don't have the 90 day stamp on your departure card it does not mean you have not reported.

If you report the 90 days with form TM.47 by mail, what proof does one have the notification 90 days was received by the respective immigration office of your residence area, and duly registered.

Would make sense to get a receipt, same as the one when reporting personally.

I tried to give notice of 90 days stay in Bangkok/Chaeng Wattana office, ( I was just there for a different reason), but was reverted back to my North Thailand immigration office.

The last reporting 90 days in March 2012 date had lapsed because I departed Thailand and returned with a new departure card with no permission no stay timeframe . Only the arrival date was stamped.

Sometimes the permission to stay is handwritten on the departure date.

In the passport itself, next to the Re-entry permit stamp (half page) the arrival stamp shows the arrival date and handwritten the lenght permitted to stay. In my case arrival Febr 2012 permitted to stay until Sept. 2012, the expiration date of my retirement visa.

The form/card, "Receipt of Notification" stapled in my PP. has a expired

date for the last 90 days reporting stamped on it, and rendered invalid.( no Barcode is on the card)!

I guess reporting by mail now is impossible??

Any advise .

[Koratpat]

I am close to skipping the 90 day reports and just pay the fine once a year. I am just weary of going down to the immi office and dealing with that mess. The fine is the worse they can do and when you figure your time, travel, gas and other expenses vs. the fine you come out ahead by not going and paying the fine. My next 89 day is in May, so I will decide then.

[Mario2008]

I am close to skipping the 90 day reports and just pay the fine once a year. I am just weary of going down to the immi office and dealing with that mess. The fine is the worse they can do and when you figure your time, travel, gas and other expenses vs. the fine you come out ahead by not going and paying the fine. My next 89 day is in May, so I will decide then.

If you want to play it rough, so can immigration. The fine can be much higher, not only is there a maximum of 5,000 baht but there can also be an aditional 200 baht a day fine for non complience and they cna take you to court. For first time a judge will be lenient, but if you make a habit of it....

Simply report by mail. Easy.

[Maestro]

...Here is the printed our 90 day receipt form with a barcode and number on it!...

Thank you for the scanned copy. I have added it to the album "Current stamps of visas, extensions, etc". The barcode appears to be in in the format "code 128"

Using now the report again on paper with the form TM.47 but in parallel with the barcode on the receipt would seem to keep open the option of simplifying the procedure with the use of only the barcode in future. Let's hope for the best. I wonder, though, whether the barcode printed on the form is now going to be the same for all foreigners who submit the TM.47, which would seem to defeat the purpose of automating the administration of these reports.

If others are given the same receipt, ie with a barcode, I would appreciate it if they posted in this topic to say whether it has the same text "B----------8" printed below the barcode.

Edited April 15, 2012 by Maestro
Hiding part of barcode text.

[lopburi3]

Totally different starting with "A and 11 numbers" from Chiang Watanna several months ago

[Maestro]

Supposedly from my next visit in July, I will have to fill out the form by hand as they gave me an old TM47 to write ahead of time!

As the old TM.47 has no barcode in the receipt portion of the form I believe there should be no problem if you filled out the online form on your computer and printed it out. Easier for immigration to read for their manual input into their database.

[Maestro]

Totally different starting with "A and 11 numbers" from Chiang Watanna several months ago

Thanks. Comparing Badbanker's receipt of notification just now with the receipt portion of the online TM.47 I see that they are not completely identical. Badbanker's receipt with the barcode was obviously generated and printed on a computer, and this makes it possible to assign individual barcodes.

Probably no personal information coded into the barcode, just an ID number that is meant to link to an individual foreigner's data in the police database. I wonder if, in the database structure, they allow for the possibility that one person my have more than one concurrently valid passport, issued by the same or by different countries, to more than one name if issued by different countries. Perhaps they are still working on refining this. In the text entry on Badbanker's receipt I see one standardisation, the use of ISO 3166-1, the three-digit alphabetic country code for the nationality. This is not on the only other receipt I have in the album, issued in September 2008 in Phuket.

[Baloo22]

I just went through a 90-day report at Chiang Mai Immigration office on 11 April 2012. When I received my passport back from the Immigration officer the "Receipt of Notification" (bottom portion of TM47) was stapled to one of the passport pages. There is no barcode on my "Receipt of Notification" (bottom portion of TM47). After going through my passport page by page, I did find a barcode sticker on the inside back cover of my passport. The number that the sticker has right below all the bars is my passport number.

I don't know when or who put that barcode sticker on there. It could have been Chiang Mai Immigration or it could have been Jomtien Immigration on one of my earlier 90-day reports. I really can't say. But I have decided just to leave it there.

I wrote a short report on my first visit to Chiang Mai Immigration for others that may be going to Chiang Mai Immigration for the first time. So other first timers do not waste time wandering around the area/building with the crowd of Burmese people in multiple lines! (Mario2008 referenced it above.)

[Tywais]

Thank you for the scanned copy. I have added it to the album "Current stamps of visas, extensions, etc". The barcode appears to be in in the format "code 128"

Just to cross check, I ran the bar code through an online barcode scanner and it matches the text below it.

[Maestro]

Having learnt in the meantime that the barcode contains personal information, contrary to what I had earlier assumed, including, among other things, the passport number, I have now pixelated part of it. From the structure of the barcode it seems to me that it is not suitable for the unique identification of an individual foreigner and this may be part of the reason why no definitive change to the barcode system has been made yet. As I mentioned in an earlier post, a foreigner can have more than one concurrently valid passport from the same country, can have passports from more than one country, and even if he has only one passport, the number usually changes when a new passport is issued for an expiring one. The best approach, I believe, would be a personal ID number that contains no coded personal information, just like the Thai ID card, and it would then be a good idea to issue ID cards with that number to foreigners on annual extensions of stay.

[Thanyaburi Mac]

Maestro

Hmmm, a "personal ID number" for foreigners?

However, the Yellow Tambien Ban does have this and when I last renewed my Thai driving permit the gal at the counter asked (wonder why she asked me?) if it was OK if she used that number on my permit rather than the passport number. Only addition to the Yellow Tambien Ban process would be to have a photo taken and an ID card printed. Easy for amphur offices to do so as they do all the time for their Thai constituents.

Mac

[Badbanker]

Problem is that different government departments (Land Transport, Immigration and foreign ministry) all have different numbering systems for my nationality.

As I have stated before the personal government fiefdom system, seems to preclude a standardized numbering classification for nationality across all Thai Government Departments.