4th back to back tourist Visa Vientiane - Only checking pages of passport

[spambot]

I have just got my 4th back to back double tourist visa, but as we now know the double is no longer available. I am assuming that there might be some type of limit imposed at some point in the future for a single.

The reason I post this here is t to simply reassure anyone in the future if limitations do occur on the single tourist visa and you have a new passport there does not appear to be any computerized checking of previous visas being issued. The check is simply a visual inspection of the current passport pages. This is known by many on this forum already and this info here is just being presented as extra confidence.

I watched the admin staff processing the passports and application forms after I had made my own application and it seemed clear that there was no database being accessed in the process of administering the applications for the tourist visa. It might be interesting to note that earlier that morning I had to go to NongKhai immigration since a new rule about existing tourist visa in old passports now need to be transferred to the new passport prior to exiting Thailand.<-Click link

In summary if you do not want to read the content from the above link - At the border crossing if you had a tourist visa in your old passport the rules have changed as to what you need to do. No longer will the immigration officer simply take the old and compare the stamps to allow the new passport to be used, but now requires the old tourist visa to be transferred across to the new passport.

However the reason that I mention this is that I could see at immigration to transfer the tourist Visa across the officer had to make multiple access to different databases (using the sim chip in my passport). It looked like he signed into 4/5 different systems in order to complete the process. Since my working days were spent previously have been in the enterprise software world I could recognize something that was termed ‘swivel chair’ meaning multiple swivels of the chair to move to a different computer screens in order to see different views of information contained on a different systems.

While it might seem entirely logical that as a passport holder you should have all your applications for visas in a single system it would be unusual to have this in practice and it is more usual to have to move through higher level consuls to drive down into the different underlying separate visa application data. The reason I am boring you with this detail is to point out that Immigration obviously do have this information since he seemed to be checking this (This Info is collected at border crossing not the Embassy when providing the visas). Since it took the officer 25 mins to do the computerized admin on my details it is clear that this is a time consuming act to check through your full Visa and crossings history. However the more important point is that for the Embassy issuing visa is very unlikely to be inputting any of the data to any system since the time and effort would be very time consuming and would not make sense when there are sometimes 600 plus application in a single day. Similarly the checking of historical previous tourist visas issued will not be done - The swivel screen time required to do this would make the process unmanageable for the amount of people being processed per day.

This is a longer than necessary post – But done with good intentions – Mainly for the upcoming debate around how many single tourist visas that can be done back to back and importantly the question asked around can the Embassy or consulate check the back to back history if you get simply a new passport. There will be some that might want to use this info in order to mask history for a special one off type situation that might warrant this more extreme workaround.

Quick other side note: I was surprised that there was a new stipulation in bold on the ticket (given to track the handing of passports for the visa) of a new requirement to enter the street or road name of your accommodation while you are residing in Thailand (new Gov security requirement - I guess). And while this might seem like a small requirement if you could not provide this you were required to queue at a new place to be processed. And surprisingly around 50% of the applications had to go into this queue since they were either staying at hotels and could not remember the street/ road name or some other reason they were not able to recall the exact address.This is not a big deal, but did add an extra 30/40 mins to the morning process for the application for the forgetful.

Edited November 20, 2015 by spambot

[ubonjoe]

Moved to here.

The fact that getting a new passport is a way to get around having back to back tourist visas has been discussed before.

Getting a new passport will not help if you have several visa exempt entries or other problems with entering the country though. They will link your old and new passports when you enter the country.

[JackThompson]

I did the permission-of-stay transfer to new passport at a local immigration office. There was a form to fill out, and the process took at least as long as applying for an extension of stay. I do not know if this process has changed recently, but I would not recommend trying to do this at the border.

Also, the new passport shows the type of visa I had when the transfer occurred. If you would like your new passport to be a completely clean slate, better to make a trip to a nearby country to visit your consulate for the new passport.

[ubonjoe]

I did the permission-of-stay transfer to new passport at a local immigration office. There was a form to fill out, and the process took at least as long as applying for an extension of stay. I do not know if this process has changed recently, but I would not recommend trying to do this at the border.

Also, the new passport shows the type of visa I had when the transfer occurred. If you would like your new passport to be a completely clean slate, better to make a trip to a nearby country to visit your consulate for the new passport.

You probably have a long term extension of stay. That has to be done at an immigration office.

A tourist visa entry and an extension of it can be done on departure from the country. Immigration offices have been known to tell people to do them on departure and send them away.

[4evermaat]

Moved to here.

The fact that getting a new passport is a way to get around having back to back tourist visas has been discussed before.

Getting a new passport will not help if you have several visa exempt entries or other problems with entering the country though. They will link your old and new passports when you enter the country.

What if the new passport is obtained outside of Thailand? i.e. you have your old passport, then you exit thailand, then obtain a new passport, then re-enter thailand on new passport.

[oncearugge]

Moved to here.

The fact that getting a new passport is a way to get around having back to back tourist visas has been discussed before.

Getting a new passport will not help if you have several visa exempt entries or other problems with entering the country though. They will link your old and new passports when you enter the country.

What if the new passport is obtained outside of Thailand? i.e. you have your old passport, then you exit thailand, then obtain a new passport, then re-enter thailand on new passport.

Try reading what UJ wrote again!

"Getting a new passport will not help if you have several visa exempt entries or other problems with entering the country though. They will link your old and new passports when you enter the country."

[spambot]

Thanks UbonJoe

Yup I know -

But I wanted to add some context about the process since I know that its just so easy to simply say something will be OK and when you turn up its not OK.

This is not amazing new info that I am providing, but rater an additional beat that might just help some reach a judgement because the way the conclusion was derived.

Hence this is my attempt to add a little extra detail and context so people have more confidence on the information on which they can make judgments upon.

From my own perspective I usually find other peoples post more convincing when they show how they know, what they know. Rather than being amazed at what I think they know.

Yup good point about the border control -

I agree that they must have a database or a set of screens that shows up very specific problems to make decisions against - What I am not sure however is if several visa exempt entries can be seen on this system. That is not to say that this information is not there, but normally it is not something that is available to the immigration officer from this type of system.

I am guessing that the system they use is dated and the original development on the system never added the bespoke requirement to check against several visa exempt entries (that has only emerged with new changes in policy over the last number years).

I think its more likely that they will in practice still do a visual inspection of the old passport on exit and not use the computer system (see below) to identify multiple visa exempt usage.

If they can not see on their computer system the history of old passports (or indeed any passports) the one obvious solution for multiple visa exempts is to not have the old passport with you when you attempt to enter Thailand- This is an entirely valid position to hold since the old passport is superseded at the point where the old passport visa was transferred to your new passport and Thai immigration accepted / stamped the transferred visa on new passport on exit.

However I do not know the actual system they use in detail I only how these systems are usually build and I am only voicing my suspicions and not my knowledge of what is actually happening. And if anyone does know - Please call out.

The reason I think there is no easy single process on the existing system to show the several visa exempt entries

The main purpose of the computerized systems on border control systems are mostly focus upon validation and identification to stop criminals using fake identification. Hence border control systems mostly just verify the passports itself and check the identify of a person against the passport to prevent identity theft and run a check against external Interpol and other agency alert systems. These systems do not usually show the crossing history for an Individual passport.

Validity and authenticity checks are made on the scan of the passport the completed transaction of entry / exit is recorded as an event then fed into a larger central database and the information is no longer held local.

If you then wanted to latter retrieve data from the database you obviously can make an individual query on the database - But these are usually made from the actually information contained on the visa / passport itself. The system is designed for checking what is on the passport is the same as exists in the database and hence validating that the passport is not forged. This is not to be confused entering the passport number and the system providing a history log of all events to then check against what is contained in the passport - The system is checking on what you can physically see in the passport to tell you if its valid or not (forged).

If you did wish to see this by only using the passport number and a complete history of where that passport had crossed what borders on what dates then this would be possible, but this would normally require a management reporting process that is entirely outside the scope of a local immigration office and would be conducted using an IT manager specialist focused upon these specialist requirement from the system.

Obviously any system can be configured to do things that are outside of what the core software provides at a latter date, but this is usually very expensive and requires a solid business case. The amount of time and investment that is required to do what might seem to be the simplest of things like roll up the amount of back to back visa exempt entries is quite a challenge in such an enterprise software system that they are using - hence i suspect there is a good chance if wanting to see the several visa exempt entries they are still limited to only doing a visual inspection of an actual original passport(s).

[oncearugge]

I read this far "where the old passport visa was transferred to your new passport " before giving up !

Visas are never transferred!

If an "old passport contains a valid Visa the both "old" and "new" passports have to be shown ..........................

[gabruce]

It's disappointing to hear about the requirement to transfer the tourist visa. That is my situation exactly and I went to ChiangMai immigration Wed (Nov18,2015) and was told that it wasn't necessary to transfer my tourist visa, to just take both passports on my way out of the country on Sunday. Immigration closes for the week in 5 minutes, so I may be stuck at the border longer than I expected. Sigh!

[JackThompson]

Border-control / IOs systems can at least show your previous entry history, and whether a quota of VisaExempt entries was exceeded. I do not know - but would like to know - if they can see the "type of visa" used on previous entries - Edu, TV, O-type, etc - or whether they rely on what they see in your passport for this.

Note that they DO seem to page through the entire passport on entry, studying each page; they are looking for something there which is not on their screen. My last entry on a new passport was much faster, in part due to this factor.

[Shiver]

Thankyou for the information. I too am waiting to see how many single 60 day entries people find is the average before having to take other measures.

I can understand the computer side of things being a real hassle for immigration. I used to work in several capacities as a computer engineer, and remember in UK what they called "joined up government" (trying to get all the different databases to talk to each other). Distributed data and exporting legacy data to a new system can be like putting a square peg in a round hole, and I don't envy whoever is tasked with that job for border control. Even though they've made a lot of progress over the last few years, I suspect it will be a few years more before they can have a system that they can pull all the information from one screen and process quickly.

TL;DR version: Expect long waiting times for at least the next few years.

Btw, my last trip to Vientiane I got through in under a minute, but coming back into Thailand they scrutinized every persons passport thoroughly, taking perhaps 10 mins per person, meaning a couple of hours in the queue. This was just after the BKK bombing. Not sure if it's like that now, but can report back when I go there in 30 days.

Edited November 20, 2015 by Shiver

[ubonjoe]

It's disappointing to hear about the requirement to transfer the tourist visa. That is my situation exactly and I went to ChiangMai immigration Wed (Nov18,2015) and was told that it wasn't necessary to transfer my tourist visa, to just take both passports on my way out of the country on Sunday. Immigration closes for the week in 5 minutes, so I may be stuck at the border longer than I expected. Sigh!

If you will be crossing on Sunday they will do it at the bridge since the immigration office will be closed.

CM immigration did what many offices do. The are not aware of what they do at Nong Khai.

[gabruce]

It's disappointing to hear about the requirement to transfer the tourist visa. That is my situation exactly and I went to ChiangMai immigration Wed (Nov18,2015) and was told that it wasn't necessary to transfer my tourist visa, to just take both passports on my way out of the country on Sunday. Immigration closes for the week in 5 minutes, so I may be stuck at the border longer than I expected. Sigh!

If you will be crossing on Sunday they will do it at the bridge since the immigration office will be closed.

CM immigration did what many offices do. The are not aware of what they do at Nong Khai.

They did do it at the bridge on Sunday, though they were VERY unhappy about it. I would highly recommend having it done at the nearest immigration if anyone else is ever in the same situation.

[JackThompson]

I did the permission-of-stay transfer to new passport at a local immigration office. There was a form to fill out, and the process took at least as long as applying for an extension of stay. I do not know if this process has changed recently, but I would not recommend trying to do this at the border. ...

You probably have a long term extension of stay. That has to be done at an immigration office.

A tourist visa entry and an extension of it can be done on departure from the country. Immigration offices have been known to tell people to do them on departure and send them away.

Actually, it was an SETV entry which was transferred. I was surprised by the length of the procedure, given previous reports of this process.

Note that on return from Immigration, I also immediately showed my condo-manager the new passport, which they copied and (I think) used to file a new report to immigration. I didn't want them to get nailed with a fine.

Edited November 24, 2015 by JackThompson

[wonderkheiyw]

'To my mind' and I really don't know very much at all - but we still have to use our own intuition to make judgement on our own circumstances don't we - but where you really hand yourself over to the authorities must be when you apply an extension at local immigration (or anything at local immigration), because surely regional information management must be far more do-able than national databases and to my mind at least, applying an extension in the current climate is basically saying 'please send an officer round to check me up, and once he's checked he'll probably keep checking', is there a trade off between making more border runs-to-giving yourself over to scrutiny? As I say this is all conjecture on my part.