New immigration cards to replace old - in October

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Gaybutton
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New immigration cards to replace old - in October

Post by Gaybutton »

I have not found any information as to how this will affect those of us who reside in Thailand and will not be leaving Thailand before the new cards come into effect. Our old departure cards are already stapled into our passports.

My guess is any of the following three possibilities will happen after the new cards come into effect and we go to immigration to submit our 90-day address reports, apply for a retirement visa renewal, or whatever:

1. They'll simply let our current cards remain in place until we leave Thailand.

2. They'll replace our current cards with computerized new versions that already contain our information.

3. Well have to fill in new information cards.
_______________________________________

Immigration Bureau clears up confusion over termination of Immigration 6 form

By NNT

August 10, 2017

BANGKOK – The Immigration Bureau has pointed out that there has been a misunderstanding over news the Prime Minister signed the cancellation of the Immigration 6 card, explaining that the stoppage was to pave the way for a new form to be introduced in October.

The Immigration Bureau has clarified that while the Immigration 6 form that travelers must complete before entering or re-entering the Kingdom has been cancelled, the system has not been terminated and the form will be replaced by a new design. The new form was created by the Ministry of Tourism and Sports so that it can better gather needed data.

Commander of the bureau Pol Lt Gen Nutthorn Prohsunthorn and Don Muang Airport Director Wing Commander Suthirawat Suwanwat meanwhile, have led discussions on remedying crowding and slow queues for immigration. The two noted however, that Don Muang Airport has seen a surge in travelers over the past 5 years from 10,000 a day to 40,000 and that immigration desks often have to process over 4,000 people at a time, resulting in delays.

Officials are to initially expand processing space to add capability to handle another 1,000 passengers at a time

http://www.pattayamail.com/thailandnews ... orm-183172
_____________________________________

New immigration cards to replace old ones

August 11, 2017

The Ministry of the Interior said that it has not canceled the immigration card, also known as the TM. 6 form, but will replace it with a new one, in response to widespread news last night that PM Prayuth Chan-ocha decided to scrap the form.

Earlier reports by PPTV and Bangkok Post said that the cancellation of the immigration card was implemented to address the hour-long queue’s flyers face when entering Thailand via major airports.

But the truth is, the cabinet has only signed to cancel the old TM. 6 in order to allow a new form to be used, starting Oct. 1, according to a statement by the Ministry of Defense published by Thai News Agency.

The introduction of the new form has nothing to do with this week’s complaints by fliers at Don Mueang, who had to wait as long as four hours to get through immigration — the cabinet approved the new TM. 6 in January of this year.

How is the new TM. 6 different than the old one? It’s not, really. From an example published online, the new form requests the same information but the formatting is reduces the form from three to two pages. The new form also contains barcodes.

Interior Minister Anupong Paochinda spoke to Thairath about the false reports that the card was scrapped. He said that the TM. 6 card is still useful for the Tourism Ministry to collect information on the country’s visitors.

The immigration bureau also has also issued a statement to confirm that we will still have to fill out immigration cards after all. The statement was signed with their motto: “Good guys in, bad guys out.”

http://pattayaone.news/en/immigration-i ... new-cards/
fountainhall

Re: New immigration cards to replace old - in October

Post by fountainhall »

This is yet another piece of idiotic bureaucratic bungling fudge with no one prepared to make any kind of stand. The result is a mess that is even worse than before!

The whole point of a redesign was to make the form simpler. Well, as you can see from the sample printed recently in The Nation, it is a bit smaller because the detachable departure part of the card (on the left) is not as large as the present one. It looks a bit like the Immigration document for arrival in Japan. But not only has nothing been dropped from the front side of the form, two extra items have been added - your email address and phone number. Does this mean your phone number in your home country or in Thailand? It does not say! If in Thailand, many arrivals will not by then have purchased their SIM cards. As for having hotel phone numbers handy, good luck!

Re the garbage on the back, Immigration wanted to drop all but one line of that. So it was being scrubbed when the Tourist Authority cried foul. They need this info for their statistics, they claimed. Well, I wonder where else in the world you have to state your annual income on an Arrivals form? Certainly nowhere else I have visited, as far as I recall. And will those in countries with currencies other than US$ have a clue about the currency conversion rates?

As for being part of a tour group or type of flight, that information is all automatically sent to the Immigration Department by the departure airports within seconds of an aircraft taking off for Thailand. So why can it not be automatically forwarded to the TAT computer system?

Given the complexity of addresses in Thailand, does Immigration seriously think that the tiny space allocated leaves enough room for more than an apartment building and a city? Yet for those on a one-year retirement visa, this is acceptable in place of the 90-day reporting and all the detail that requires. Nuts!

And I really wonder how many of the new breed of tourists coming to Thailand have any clue what most of a form in only English or Thai means? That, most probably, will mean even longer Immigration queues as officers point out which parts of the form have not been completed accurately! Sometimes this country really does seem to take several steps backward in trying to move just one step forward!

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Re: New immigration cards to replace old - in October

Post by Gaybutton »

fountainhall wrote:The result is a mess that is even worse than before!
Are you surprised?
Jun

Re: New immigration cards to replace old - in October

Post by Jun »

As we're quite well into the 21st century:

1 If Thailand must collect all this data, they could give visitors the option of inputting this data on a website.
This means the data can already be on a database & the user interface could cover all the commonly required languages.
Data should be saved by passport number, so a repeat visit should only require editing of previous data.

2 This then opens up the opportunity for all sorts of efficiencies. For example, as the data can be pre-checked, customers from low-risk countries could be granted access to electronic passport gates. You just need warning signs in English, Chinese & whatever other languages clearly stating this option is only for those who have filled in the data on line and you WILL be sent to the back of the manual queue if this is not done. (To be enforced by security).
fountainhall

Re: New immigration cards to replace old - in October

Post by fountainhall »

Totally agree. As I pointed out earlier, some of the key data is already collected by the airline, often at the time of booking but certainly prior to a boarding pass being issued. This includes a passenger's full name, date of birth, nationality, passport number, flight number and departure airport. That information is then passed to the arrival airport's computers as soon as an aircraft's doors are closed prior to departure. So Thailand Immigration will already have the information required on the first three lines of the form well in advance of most international arrivals! Why is it required a second time from those same passengers? No doubt because the computer programmes here are out of date!

There is no excuse for this information to be a problem for tour groups. All groups have a tour leader who normally holds passports after check in. The tour company can and should gather all the information prior to the group arriving at the airport. So no problems for them at check in nor on arrival.

I have called the information required on the back mostly garbage. Why do the TAT need to know if the passenger is staying in a hotel, guest house or youth hostel? They already get that and more information directly from the establishments after check-in. And what are they going to do with the income figures, given that I suspect a large number of passengers will just check any box without consideration of their actual income.

Given the above and the chaos that has regularly occurred at peak arrivals/departures times for several years now, it is perfectly clear those in charge have little clue about what they are doing - except that it is what they did more than a decade ago and cannot be bothered moving with the times!
bobsaigon3

Re: New immigration cards to replace old - in October

Post by bobsaigon3 »

Also posted on GayThailand: Another approach would be to have Thai Immigration officers stationed at some airports in China so that immigration processing could be done even before the tourists board their Thailand bound flights. On arrival in Thailand, they would be dealt with at "Pre-screened" channels.

But is there really any way to efficiently and quickly handle several thousand people who arrive simultaneously? If the airports lack sufficient space and if the travelers are unsophisticated first time tourists who don't speak English and are unfamiliar with the concept of queues, the prospect is not encouraging.
fountainhall

Re: New immigration cards to replace old - in October

Post by fountainhall »

The USA has Immigration desks at some extra-US airports - notably in Canada, Shannon and Abu Dhabi. I am certain China will never allow it. And even if it did, the new wave of immigration is coming from India. Do you have to open Immigration stations in the main Indian cities as well? If so, why should they have special treatment when Brits, Americans, Australians and others still have to stand in line?

Yes, there is a way. Aircraft must file a flight plan which includes scheduled departure time. Landing time is partly dictated by routing and weather. They are then allocated a departure slot This is frequently different from the official departure time. One reason is that an aircraft can not take off unless the destination airport has agreed to accept it at the scheduled arrival time on that flight plan. The last thing the airline and the airport want is a bunch of aircraft being stacked in various locations close to Bangkok because there are too many to land them safely. So to maintain on-time departure statistics, many aircraft are pushed back from their gates and then have to wait before going to the taxiway until their arrival time has been approved. That has happened to me many times - once by as long as an hour. All Thailand has to do is refuse landing permission until it knows it is able to process a flight.

This, though, opens up another nasty can of worms. Short-haul budget carriers rely on 30-minute turnarounds. If an airport routinely denies landing permission way beyond scheduled arrival, it will face a revolt from the carriers who effectively pay its bills. As far as long haul is concerned at BKK, the airport can deny airlines' proposed schedules if it means an excess of flights arriving at a specific time. But many airports in Europe and elsewhere have no-flight overnight curfews. So there may be time limits within which an aircraft arrival has to be slotted. Several airlines have been denied the right to additional flights at BKK because the airport cannot accommodate more landings at certain times.

None of these "solutions" is satisfactory. The only workable solution is enhancement of the Immigration computers to process fast the information it receives prior to an aircraft's departure for Bangkok, and either abolition of arrival cards or far greater simplicity of the form (as those for Hong Kong and Taipei) - preferably both!

And there is another. The government should stop its snail's pace attitude to airport expansion. It has had plans for years to expand BKK. Absolutely nothing happened - until recently. But the new terminal and the new runway will not be completed for several year when they ought to have been opened by now. Until then, expect more chaos at peak times whatever the official line about opening more immigration desks.
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Re: New immigration cards to replace old - in October

Post by pong »

fountainhall wrote: 1.This is yet another piece of idiotic bureaucratic bungling fudge with no one prepared to make any kind of stand. The result is a mess that is even worse than before!
2.And I really wonder how many of the new breed of tourists coming to Thailand have any clue what most of a form in only English or Thai means? That, most probably, will mean even longer Immigration queues as officers point out which parts of the form have not been completed accurately! 3.Sometimes this country really does seem to take several steps backward in trying to move just one step forward!
http://www.nationmultimedia.com/detail/ ... l/30323322
@1.fully agree
@2.no, and you should know that due to your frequent travels in+out of Swampy, Since at least 2 yrs-after these many complaints (about those funny mainland chinese mostly) you are checked at end of Q by officers in training if its filled out (I always answer them in Thai ''I have written all'') and sent back if not so.
@3.yes, agree again
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Re: New immigration cards to replace old - in October

Post by pong »

fountainhall wrote:Totally agree. As I pointed out earlier, some of the key data is already collected by the airline, often at the time of booking but certainly prior to a boarding pass being issued. This includes a passenger's full name, date of birth, nationality, passport number, flight number and departure airport. That information is then passed to the arrival airport's computers as soon as an aircraft's doors are closed prior to departure. So Thailand Immigration will already have the information required on the first three lines of the form well in advance of most international arrivals! Why is it required a second time from those same passengers? No doubt because the computer programmes here are out of date!
NO-and you should have realised that. That info is (if this is indeed one?!) to AIRports it does NOT mean it reaches IMMIGration-most certainly it does not for TH/BKK, probably due to that old and well-known fact of all those computers: incompatible systems.
Oh-the airline, when I board in EUR, has my name, birthdate and passport nr from passpt, address only via their booking system (different for any airline/group). I am now too long out of that bisnis to know all precise details (plus they have likely changed since), but what I DO remember very well, is that TH hardly gets ANY incoming info other as name/birth/nationality sent on.
What does help on arrival is indeed if you have been in before, as then they retrieve your data from the Immi-system, for newbees they have to fill it in-that's what of course eats enormous time. in SIN/Changi they seem able to just either copy or link it to the barcodes on forms (that indeed also have to be filled out there for entry for non-ASEAN). Probably again completely incomprehensible and unfathomable for the masters in charge. They are more occupied in making ways to make re-entry as nasty as possible for all whiteys, aka as would-be potential criminals.
fountainhall

Re: New immigration cards to replace old - in October

Post by fountainhall »

pong wrote:@2.no, and you should know that due to your frequent travels in+out of Swampy, Since at least 2 yrs-after these many complaints (about those funny mainland chinese mostly) you are checked at end of Q by officers in training if its filled out (I always answer them in Thai ''I have written all'') and sent back if not so.
Sorry but that remark is incorrect. I was not specifically talking about Chinese groups. Just general passengers. Have you arrived just after a full flight from Korea? I have lost track of the number of times passengers reach immigration without checking and then waste time because the card has not been competed correctly. Often it is just the signature that is missing because that is an incredibly tiny line at the foot of the page that is clearly not designed for Korean and Chinese characters. Some will be from tour groups but others are certainly individuals - mostly women!!
pong wrote:NO-and you should have realised that. That info is (if this is indeed one?!) to AIRports it does NOT mean it reaches IMMIGration-most certainly it does not for TH/BKK, probably due to that old and well-known fact of all those computers: incompatible systems.
Oh-the airline, when I board in EUR, has my name, birthdate and passport nr from passpt, address only via their booking system (different for any airline/group). I am now too long out of that bisnis to know all precise details (plus they have likely changed since), but what I DO remember very well, is that TH hardly gets ANY incoming info other as name/birth/nationality sent on.
Your info appears to be some way out of date (although I have never suggested that individual addresses are included in it). My Taiwanese ex-bf with whom I have dinner quite regularly is a computer specialist now working for one of those companies which collects on behalf of all airlines and airports in the Asia-Pacific region all the information I described. He devises and refines the systems to ensure that all the information I described is sent soon after an aircraft leaves the gate and that it is received immediately by the arrival airport. That info concerns all flights including those departing for Thailand. If you still have doubts, I'll happily check again with him.

We are, I believe, both correct in suggesting the systems installed in Thai airports are way out of date. I have no idea which department receives such information but it should not take an Einstein to ensure the relevant detail is automatically directed to the Immigration officers' computers within nano-seconds.

Incidentally, way back in 1992 when I was commuting regularly between Tokyo and Hong Kong, after the Immigration check at Narita I well recall passing a smallish office with a white board on which were marked all departing flights and the number of passengers booked on each. Although I never noticed a similar office on arrival, I am certain there would have been one with at the very least the number of arriving passengers from every flight. If BKK and DMK have even that basic information, they should be able to adjust Immigration desk officers to cope. But then of course there have not been enough officers for years. As mentioned earlier, the number has actually been cut from the number employed a few years ago. Nuts!
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