Overstay as a Thai Citizen

[paz]

Are you a lawyer? What makes you so sure that any idiot immigration officer (who enjoys taking advantage of legal grey areas) wouldn't threaten the OP with his interpretation of section 17, like use of other nationalities, when the wording of section 17 is not clear at all. Only precedence of how this law is applied can tell us that.

Not worth risking it for 20,000 Baht.

According to you, there are no legal grey areas in Thailand, the law being perfectly clear, black and white and all that. Maybe you are so hard up that the 20,000 overstay is worth risking a prolonged court case and potential threat of loss of a citizenship for?

We are just reading a translation (that is clear enough). In Thai would even more perfectly clear to anyone. No officer for as much ignorant and ill-intentioned he can be, can threaten any Thai on nationality. The case would never even go to court.

Anyway, you're the one threatening and giving wrong advice by scaremongering about nothing, so please stop. Keep your inability to stand for your rights to yourself.

[ubonjoe]

I think there is a bit of bickering going on. It needs to end please.

[HyperMyopic]

I would like to request for the closure of this thread. It has devolved into unhelpful bickering over the validity of my paternally acquired citizenship to the country in which I was born.

If there is no former precedence set for this case where a citizen contests a strange charge of illegal abode in his homeland, I will most likely not contest the fine. I have no immediate reason to leave, but I will attempt to do so without showing my US passport. In the meantime I will periodically check this site for cases similar to mine.

To those who have provided advice, I thank you wholeheartedly.

[tropo]

I'm not being critical, but this is the same usual advice I give to anyone who is a dual national.

When entering Thailand use your Thai passport.

Always enter and exit on your Thai passport when entering Thailand.

As a Thai citizen with a Thai pasport you do not need a visa, and therefore you can not overstay.

If you are a dual national. and you use your non-Thai passport to enter Thailand you are subject to the immigration rules of of that country .... and you can overstay. Immigration will charge you the same overstay fine they would as any foriegner who had that overstay.

Basic rule: if you arer a dual national, and you enter Thailand on the passport of that other country, Thai immigration will treat you by the same rules as any citizen of that other country.

That is why you should always enter Thailand on a Thai passport if you have one.

Your basic rule does not apply here. The OP did not have a Thai passport when he arrived - he obtained that later on.

[tom21]

the op has a thai passport so why not a border run land or air and use his thai passport to leave the country and to re-enter.

[Maestro]

Removed an off-topic post and the replies to it.

[Maestro]

I would like to request for the closure of this thread. It has devolved into unhelpful bickering over the validity of my paternally acquired citizenship to the country in which I was born.

If there is no former precedence set for this case where a citizen contests a strange charge of illegal abode in his homeland, I will most likely not contest the fine. I have no immediate reason to leave, but I will attempt to do so without showing my US passport. In the meantime I will periodically check this site for cases similar to mine.

To those who have provided advice, I thank you wholeheartedly.

You have to accept some blame for the bickering that was started, because you have never made it clear how you acquired Thai nationality by birth, there being more than one way, including, under certain circumstances, being born in Thailand to parents who are both non-Thai.

Your emphasis on having been born in Thailand and with it the implication that this was a factor in your acquisition of Thai nationality does not help to clarify how you became a Thai national by birth, ie whether under clause (1) or clause (2) of Section 7 of the Nationality Act. On the basis of all information you have provided so far, both possibilities exist. In fact, being born in Thailand is essential for the acquisition of Thai nationality by reason of being born to foreign parents under specific circumstances, but if one of your parents was a Thai national at the time of your birth it would have mattered only if you were born before a certain date and depending on which parent was a foreigner.

There has been no bickering over the "validity of my paternally acquired citizenship", but the text of a section of the Nationality Act was quoted which refers to the authority of the Minister of the Interior to revoke the Thai nationality of a person born to foreign parents under certain circumstances. Your failure to clarify whether these circumstances apply to you led to a discussion which may or may not be applicable to your case.

Regarding precedents, in Thailand judges are not bound by Supreme Court rulings in precedent cases but are free to take them into consideration.

[Maestro]

...

Thai laws are often ambiguously worded, and court judgements are often based on precedence for this reason. Now if section 17 concerns revocation of citizenship for PR parents only, but that is certainly not stated in section 17, then a court judgement on this one may go the wrong way, in the (albeit unlikely event) of an overzealous immigration officer trying to challenge the OP's right to citizenship under section 17, and the judge taking the letter of the law at face value.

...

Yes, laws are sometimes ambiguously worded, and with your quotation of Section 17 of the Immigration Act we are not even talking about a law, but about a translation of it. Whether you will find the Thai original less ambiguous or confusing, I cannot say.

Section 17 concerns all persons who acquired Thai nationality "by reason of his having been born within the Thai Kingdom of an alien father or mother". It just so happens that currently only children who are born to foreign parents who are both Permanent Residents can acquire Thai nationality at birth this way.

Any immigration officer can challenge anything he wants even if he has no right to do so. To challenge a Thai national's right to citizenship, he would obviously have make a report, which would have to pass up the ladder in the police department to the Director General and from there to Minister, who can they decide not to revoke nationality even if the conditions of Section 17 are met. In the meantime, unless and until the nationality is revoked, the person in question can of course continue to exercise all his rights as a Thai national.

No judge at any level of the Thai judicial system would get involved at any stage of evaluating a case of this nature and in deciding on it.