Question about Thai with Dual Citizenship Going-to/Coming-from Thailand

[Arkady]

Sigh.... Getting back on topic. My wife has dual Aussie/Thai citizenship and passports, and we live in Thailand. When we go back to Oz she leaves Thailand on her Thai one and uses her Aussie one to enter Australia. Can be a problem with Thai immigration when leaving as no Oz visa in the Thai passport but showing the Oz passport if asked usually shuts them up.

Coming back to Thailand she always shows both passports at Sydney check in and explains we live in Thailand. She is then checked in with her Thai passport (I guess they are used to this) as a Thai. When going through Oz immigration she just shows her Oz passport and never a problem. If his wife is checking in at the Aussie airport with her Oz passport only she will more than likely have a problem using her Thai passport to enter Thailand as she is classed as an Australian. All of the above is from many trips that we have done. I know that checking in with Oz passport only, is a problem as my wife did it once and had a hell of a time trying to get into Thailand using the Thai passport. They wanted her to enter on the Oz one then do a land border exit, then re-enter on the Thai one.

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Getting her to do a land border exit and then re-enter by land from the same country on a different passport would have been difficult.

You should quote the constitution at them as it is unconstitutional to deny entry to the Kingdom to a Thai citizen.

I am not sure why Thai Immigration take upon themselves to check foreign visas of outbound travellers. Surely they are only responsible for enforcing Thai immigration law. The airlines are the ones who have to take responsibility for checking passengers' visas for their destination and can incur heavy fines plus the cost of flying out visaless passengers. I wonder to what extent it is now possible to avoid this problem by using the automatic gates for Thai passports on exiting Suwanabhumi. Are they usually working?

Please, no more discuss of Mr Oxymoron and his bitter sweet approach to marriage.

[Bcgardener]

The one time she was really given an intense interrogation by Thai immigration they asked questions like . "Did someone else pay for your ticket", "do you plan to work in Oz", "has someone recruited you for work there". Finally showing the Aussie passport stopped all this.

However I think that he was actually doing a good service. What if she had been recruited for a so called maids job when in fact it was forced prostitution. Cases like this come up from time to time in Sydney where the girls have had their passports confiscated and have been made to work of f an inflated debt. Brothels are legal in most of Australia but obviously this type of forced service is not. I think the immigration guy was just taking an interest in the welfare of a Thai girl.

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[sometimewoodworker]

- As of 2009 (?) onwards women were allowed to keep their maiden name if they so wish.

I don't know the exact date when this came in but it was before 2006 as we had the option in January that year.

[ubonjoe]

The law was changed in 2002 as a result of court action.

[samran]

BCGardener, your wife's story is not rare. Thai immigration can and do take aside what appear to be single women who might be used in some sort of illegal labour schemes or worse, human trafficing. To this extent they are doing their job to prevent this.

Your wife did the correct thing in simply showing her Australian passport when further questioned. I come and go a dozen times per year, never with any questioning, but that is partly cause I am a male. Never have any visa in my Thai passport as either I don't need one to travel there on my Thai passport, or I pull out the Aussie one on arrival if it is home, the EU or n.America.

Ironically I do get hassled from time to time at BKK airport (5 or 6 times over the years), but by Australian immigration who have (by agreement with Thailand) people stationed here. This is usually while checking in or just before you board you get dragged aside by Australian immigration to look at your passport. I usually hand over my Thai passport and let them get all flustered asking me similar questions to your wife actually, before the penny drops with them and they ask if I also have another PP. All fun and games this profiling business.

[Bcgardener]

BCGardener, your wife's story is not rare. Thai immigration can and do take aside what appear to be single women who might be used in some sort of illegal labour schemes or worse, human trafficing. To this extent they are doing their job to prevent this.

Your wife did the correct thing in simply showing her Australian passport when further questioned. I come and go a dozen times per year, never with any questioning, but that is partly cause I am a male. Never have any visa in my Thai passport as either I don't need one to travel there on my Thai passport, or I pull out the Aussie one on arrival if it is home, the EU or n.America.

Ironically I do get hassled from time to time at BKK airport (5 or 6 times over the years), but by Australian immigration who have (by agreement with Thailand) people stationed here. This is usually while checking in or just before you board you get dragged aside by Australian immigration to look at your passport. I usually hand over my Thai passport and let them get all flustered asking me similar questions to your wife actually, before the penny drops with them and they ask if I also have another PP. All fun and games this profiling business.

Same with my wife, she has done the BKK - SYD trip many many times both with me and by herself. She is now used to this sort of thing. The incident I described happened last year when we were going back to Oz for Christmas. As you described she let the immigration guy throw all those questions at her then took great delight in producing her Aussie passport to shut him up. However I would still rather that they do this sort of thing rather than just take a "who cares" attitude. It could and probably has saved some poor Thai girl from falling into a forced labour trap. Apart from Thailand she always uses her Australian passport as there are a lot less problems and you don't have all the visa hassles.

[bkk_mike]

There was a time when a Thai female marrying a foreigner, and taking up his nationality, was forced to give up her Thai nationality. (Tiger Woods' mum is a famous example - as how the Thai government treated his mother is why he said no when he was offered a Thai passport).

However, it's all down to when they got married as the rules all got changed, and if she can get back onto a house book, and get a new ID card, she could almost certainly then get a new passport unless she voluntarily gave up her Thai nationality at some point. (i.e. signed it away, rather than getting it revoked automatically).

If, on the other hand, she's doing the visa runs because she views it as less hassle than getting a Thai passport, then let her carry on doing that if she wants. (None of us knows how immigration officers treat Thai's who've had their nationality taken away, or who gave it up?)

Edited October 15, 2013 by bkk_mike

[Arkady]

- As of 2009 (?) onwards women were allowed to keep their maiden name if they so wish.

I don't know the exact date when this came in but it was before 2006 as we had the option in January that year.

The Constitutional Court ruled in 2003 that the relevant section of the 1962 Names Act was unconstitutional because it deprived women of their basic rights and freedoms. I seem to recall it took about two years to actually amend the law after that.

[Arkady]

There was a time when a Thai female marrying a foreigner, and taking up his nationality, was forced to give up her Thai nationality. (Tiger Woods' mum is a famous example - as how the Thai government treated his mother is why he said no when he was offered a Thai passport).

However, it's all down to when they got married as the rules all got changed, and if she can get back onto a house book, and get a new ID card, she could almost certainly then get a new passport unless she voluntarily gave up her Thai nationality at some point. (i.e. signed it away, rather than getting it revoked automatically).

If, on the other hand, she's doing the visa runs because she views it as less hassle than getting a Thai passport, then let her carry on doing that if she wants. (None of us knows how immigration officers treat Thai's who've had their nationality taken away, or who gave it up?)

It is true that there was a time when a Thai woman marrying a foreigner, as indeed was the case in most Western countries prior to the late 40s. The UK stopped stripped British women of their nationality for marrying aliens only in 1948 or 49 when dual nationality was made expressly legal.

However, this cannot have happened to Tiger's mother because she only met his father in 1968 which was 3 years after the current Nationality Act was promulgated which clearly makes it an option but not an obligation for Thai women to renounce their Thai nationality, if they acquire the nationality of their husband. It is of course possible that she was under a misapprehension that she had to renounce Thai nationality either because of Thai law or US law. She would not have been the first.

In the previous Act of 1952 Thai women marrying aliens were liable to surrender Thai nationality on making a declaration at the district office that they intended to adopt their husband's nationality at the time they registered their marriage. So in those days there was obviously a space on the form for women to declare which way they intended to go, rather like today's forms where they have to declare whether they will retain their maiden names or assume their husband's surname. Of course, adopting your husband's nationality was normally a straightforward process in most cases and the couple simply had to go the husband's embassy in Bangkok and apply for a passport for his new wife who automatically got his nationality without ever having to set foot in his country. The case of Thai women marrying foreigners abroad doesn't seem to have been specifically addressed in the 1952 Act. At any rate most of the renunciations or revocations of Thai nationality of women married to aliens before the 1965 Act were cases of Thai Chinese women marrying Chinese men settled in Thailand. Many of these Chinese men were born in Thailand and thus entitled to Thai nationality but declined to take it up to avoid military conscription. They could easily get permanent residence and there were no restrictions on foreigners working or owning their own businesses. Once they had registered for an alien book though they permanently forfeited their rights to Thai nationality, so they could not take out Thai nationality once they were too old to get drafted. Oddly this section remains in the current Act, although it is now redundant.

[lopburi3]

Flame removed.