SURVEY: Is Immigration becoming too intrusive?

[Ian1980]

On 10/2/2016 at 9:30 AM, SaintLouisBlues said:

I adopt the Thai practice - tell them what I think they want to hear

Yes.That's what i am doing

[chappie1207]

You live in a foreign country so stop complaining... It's their rules which you have to follow.  Don't like the rules...you know where the airport is!!

[evadgib]

12 minutes ago, chappie1207 said:

You live in a foreign country so stop complaining... It's their rules which you have to follow.  Don't like the rules...you know where the airport is!!

So the answer is to 'Go home and insist your Govts do same!' ?

 

If you can't come up with something a little more original you should give the board a miss.

[doggie1955]

And now the local cops what there own info on you now, and will be knocking on your door soon. (just more tea money)

Cambodia is looking real good right about now!

 

[anon4637435435]

Thai police shouldnt be going to anyones homes. Full stop!. They dont go when you ask, call,...not care. i was atracked by an idiot with a machete many years ago for asking if the idiot could move his car so i could get out of my driveway but becauae i wasnt killed he was allowed to walk. They are ALL corrupt and a danger to the society. FIX them first then send whoever you chose. Until then stop treating farang like criminals. Farang are taking the brunt of a corrupt society because they tend to have a natural desire to question whats good and fair from what i have witnessed and thats not good for the future of abuse that will be taking place if things continue on this misguided path.

For all of us that have been here all to long and really have nowhere to go we should be given a break. It would reafirm that im still ok to raise a family that has been allowed to be happy until now. Enforce your new stupid rules on the newbies so they dont invest any money here, bring up families here and such. That would be the better way to go about it.

Selfish, immoral, slavedriving, corrupt pricks!

Like to go to there homes and ask if they have 400,000 to show me they have he ability to care for there wives and such. Track them, see where they hangout. Taste of there own medecine. 

[Jools]

8 minutes ago, bsdthai said:

Thai police shouldnt be going to anyones homes. Full stop!. They dont go when you ask, call,...not care.

Selfish, immoral, slavedriving, corrupt pricks!

Like to go to their homes and ask if they have 400,000 to show me they have he ability to care for there wives and such. Track them, see where they hangout. Taste of their own medecine. 

I love it when the realists on TV strike back at the army of Thai apologists. Thais are reviled all over southeast Asia, Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia and Myanmar all hate them, Their arrogance and sense of entitlement are legendary.

[Jools]

7 hours ago, hawker9000 said:

 

And THAT'S the issue.  Thailand is becoming quite adept at casting nets that put on a good "get-the-foreigner" show for the locals, but inconvenience and invade the privacy of the good guys and do little to actually catch the serious felons.  The exception to this would be the empty-minded long overstayers whose arrogance and unwillingness to play by the rules helps bring this all about in the first place.   Yes, I have to admit to some schadenfreude at THEIR being caught.

The difference between illegals here and in  places like the USA is that the "overstayers" are pumping money into the economy. In other countries they don't benefit local economies at all. Thailand's classic inability to "take the money and shut up" is unique. They brag of being the "envy of the world" while running off the cash cows and then turning around and complaining about their economic woes and blaming them on outsiders. If it weren't so comical it would be pitiful. The best comeback that the Thai apologists can come up with is "love it or leave it". Amazing facility for ignoring reality and propping up the "their country, their rules" mentality. Too bad that China didn't overrun them years ago.

[Iquot70]

I don't mind sharing my personal info to the Thai Government, actually they already have most of it, although they seem to be unable to put all that stuff together in a database. For instance, they surely know my bank account or my mobile number, passport, work permit, address, visas and so on, but all this data is fragmented and dispersed in their prehistoric bureaucracy...

Perhaps, with this new form (which I didn't see yet, despite I've been updating my papers regularly), their trying to get all this data in the same place. I'm not worried about tracking SIM cards neither, I don't really envy the guy who has to follow my steps or conversations, it's gonna be an extremely boring job... There is also some advantages, all this data would be (conditional, of course) handy if I need to prove my innocence in case of false accusations, no need to remind you farangs, how easy is to get trapped with some local greedy cop...

My concern is more on the tenure of the safety measures taken in storing this data. I don't wanna think what would happen if the wrong guy puts the hands on it...

Last but not least, it's plain simply annoying to be forced to write again and again all the same things, and that applies to 90 days stamp, work permit and so on, it's just a huge waste of time for me, waste of money for the Thai government and an even greater waste of trees. How many frigging trees has been cut down for all the papers we have to fill? It's everything in three or four copies!!!

My suggestion, which I know is just for the wind, would be to implement a database, nothing more, nothing less than what most of modern countries already have since decades, where to collect all this information to have them ready for the government agencies who need them. From our side, would suffice to keep this info updated regularly, on a schedule basis or simply when something change (i.e. if I change address or mobile number).

Honestly I think the concept of "Privacy" is overrated and too often confused with "Anonymity". The government needs to know where people is and what they're doing, it's the most obvious thing to keep a minimum of legal control. Privacy means that the government cannot share this information, otherwise is anonymity, the most fertile ground for any kind of felony.

[anon4637435435]

14 hours ago, spetersen said:

Stick to their rules, it's not our country, everyone is free to leave the kingdom if you don't like it, so many complains for nothing. Many of these responses want me to say get a life dude. Try to get in to a Schengen country and live there  and you will see that Thailand is like a breeze. 

This is Thailand. This is where many have been able to live and invest heavily in the country, raise families. Leaving a country when you have more than yourself to concider and not really anywhere to go is not a simple solution to an ever increasing set of rules and regulations that are becoming down right intrusive is a very careless thing to say.

 

[anon4637435435]

15 hours ago, Shroud said:

They are doing a great job and should increase incentivized measures to kick the garbage out. 

Maybe they could kick there own garbage out at the same time?. Then and only then would any of this make any sense.

[Jools]

The abysmally stupid Thai bureaucracy cannot conceive of a world that is not drowning in unnecessary paperwork in triplicate. The fact that they (ostensibly) have all this information on file is irrelevant. Simply generate tons of paperwork to justify your existence and forget about the insane costs involved. A perfect example is the announcement some years back of creating a "war room" to  track Lese Majeste posts on the internet. Thailand is a police state and will never be anything but a police state, barring a cataclysmic event that shakes the kingdom to its roots. Thais are delusional on a grand scale. Thailand wins by default because of the high quality of their hospitals. Once Cambodia and Vietnam decide that they want to pursue the Western retireee "cash cows", it's all over for the Land of Scum. I can already hear the chorus of "planes leave every hour" , so don't bother repeating it.

[zakk9]

I just love the "No problem as long as you're doing the right thing" statements. What many don't seem to understand is that "the right ting" in the view of the government changes on an irregular basis. It does so in most countries, but more often in Thailand than in most places. And it's not only about single pieces of information, but how those single pieces are combined, also with stuff that can be found online, things that may have been written or said years ago, here or in another country, that people don't even think about.

 

Government employees who are told to go after foreign targets will mostly go after the easy ones to fill up there "quotas". The easy ones are you and me, not the professional crooks who can and will buy their way out of most situations and who cover their tracks like pros, because that is what they are. Look at how tax laws work and who pays tax. It's Johnny Normal of course. Most laws work like that. They say they want to get the big, bad guys, but in reality, they get a bunch of little guys.

 

Let's see now... how many years did the Red Bull guy spend in jail so far?

[Dellboy218]

On 02/10/2016 at 10:04 AM, Mbaki said:

You need to get out more and travel around a bit, same in many other countries, your not being singled out for more repetitive paperwork just because your here

And you need to calm down a bit.  Been travelling around the world for the past 45 years and no one has asked where I frequent before, not even in the old USSR.  The obvious answer to that of course is the immigration office.

[Seismic]

The problem is that the "Bad Guys", generally are those who don't renew their visa's or do 90 day reports, they fly under the radar. Increasing the regulations for foreigners

will not have any affect on them, they are already illegal, it just has the effect of making more redundant paperwork and wasted time for both legal foreigners and the immigration department.

[Retiredandhappyhere]

Retired ex-pats using the 800,000 bahts cash-in-bank method admittedly have already been obliged to advise Immigration of the relevant bank account numbers, but why should we have to supply our current account numbers as well?  Do other counties insist on this, along with social media names as used for Facebook etc. plus details of places normally visited?  It is not as if we can place unlimited trust in the authorities here and I am reluctant to give my current bank account number to anyone unnecessarily, for personal security reasons.

[bangon04]

The foreigners who choose to comply with the regulations and fill out all the forms, are relatively easy to control or "harass" because they comply or try to.

 

The foreigners who pass across badly-policed borders, bribe border police, bribe municipal police, bribe government officials and generally ignore the finer points of the regulations, such as overstay conditions, illegal working, etc often get away with it for years, also saving time and money and hassle in many cases.

 

This does not apply only to Thailand - but where is the lesson, and who deserves our admiration?

[Jools]

On 10/2/2559 at 10:30 AM, BuaBS said:

They were already too intrusive . Now it has become worse .

Renewing every FIVE years is sufficient and 90 day reporting is insane. Reporting does not need to be done except in the case of an address change.

[hawker9000]

16 hours ago, Jools said:

The difference between illegals here and in  places like the USA is that the "overstayers" are pumping money into the economy. In other countries they don't benefit local economies at all. Thailand's classic inability to "take the money and shut up" is unique. They brag of being the "envy of the world" while running off the cash cows and then turning around and complaining about their economic woes and blaming them on outsiders. If it weren't so comical it would be pitiful. The best comeback that the Thai apologists can come up with is "love it or leave it". Amazing facility for ignoring reality and propping up the "their country, their rules" mentality. Too bad that China didn't overrun them years ago.

"...is that the "overstayers" are pumping money into the economy"

 

Some are; some aren't.  And some of what IS getting "pumped into the economy" is probably in the form of precisely the "take the money and shut up" bribery you mention.   IOW - just more contributors to the culture of corruption & greed, as if the country needed any more of that.  Overall, net net, I can't imagine that these long overstayers are contributing anything but problems, including problems trickling down from immigration for those who've BEEN playing by the rules all along but must now suffer increased suspicion, scrutiny & inconvenience 'cause immigration can't figure out any other way to differentiate the "good guys" from the "bad guys".

[SoFarAndNear]

I have no problem to give them information about myself when I apply for a visa or my first extension. But why on earth every year the same stuff and reporting every 90 days to just do the same you write already 20x times in the past 5 years. Showing photos, interviews with neighbors.....