Dual passport re-entry AU/UK

[Alint18]

Hello! 

 

I have an Australian passport which has had 3 education visas. I have been studying Thai for 2.5 years but the last time I came into Bangkok they questioned me a long time before agreeing to let me in. Truely felt like the last time that I would be allowed thru. Immigration is very weary of anyone with ED visa’s even if you can demonstrate you speak Thai well. Now my school has finished and I’m going to travel.

 

I want to come back to Thailand for 30 days later this year; I was going to use my new British passport to re-enter because immigration really didn’t like the ED visas in my Aussie passport. 

 

My question is this - is there any point using my different passport to avoid questioning when coming back or will it be flagged somehow? Since it’s a different nationality I wasn’t sure if it would show up for them that I’ve been here for 2.5 yrs on my Aus passport? I’m just trying to re enter for 30 days as painless as possible, curious if anyone with dual passports has done this before?

[NanLaew]

When was the 'last time' you entered and at what airport?

 

Has the ED visa expired or will it be expired before your planned 'later this year' visit?

[Alint18]

18 minutes ago, NanLaew said:

When was the 'last time' you entered and at what airport?

 

Has the ED visa expired or will it be expired before your planned 'later this year' visit?

Entered Feb 12th with a 90 day ED visa at BKK. It’s been extended once, which means it will expire August 12th. I plan to exit on August 8th. 

 

Wanted to return mid September for 30 days

 

[NanLaew]

8 minutes ago, Alint18 said:

Entered Feb 12th with a 90 day ED visa at BKK. It’s been extended once, which means it will expire August 12th. I plan to exit on August 8th. 

 

Wanted to return mid September for 30 days

 

Will you be getting a visa in the UK passport or using a visa-exempt entry?

[elviajero]

49 minutes ago, Alint18 said:

My question is this - is there any point using my different passport to avoid questioning when coming back or will it be flagged somehow? Since it’s a different nationality I wasn’t sure if it would show up for them that I’ve been here for 2.5 yrs on my Aus passport? I’m just trying to re enter for 30 days as painless as possible, curious if anyone with dual passports has done this before?

Swapping passports probably won’t help. When you present the Aussie passport your name and date of birth will get searched and matched to any other matched passport. It’s then up to the IO to manually link any matched passports.

[Alint18]

4 minutes ago, NanLaew said:

Will you be getting a visa in the UK passport or using a visa-exempt entry?

I was planning on doing visa exempt but I can get a tourist visa instead if that is advised.

[Alint18]

3 minutes ago, elviajero said:

Swapping passports probably won’t help. When you present the Aussie passport your name and date of birth will get searched and matched to any other matched passport. It’s then up to the IO to manually link any matched passports.

Ahh ok, so if I show a new British passport that I’ve never used in Thailand, they are still going to match my details to my Aussie one and then probably be just as suspicious of me, maybe more ????????

[elviajero]

49 minutes ago, Alint18 said:

Ahh ok, so if I show a new British passport that I’ve never used in Thailand, they are still going to match my details to my Aussie one and then probably be just as suspicious of me, maybe more ????????

All I can say is probably. Ultimately the final stage of matching passports is made manually by the IO.

 

When — John Smith, 17/01/1970, the Brit — presents his passport any John Smiths  17/01/1970 regardless of nationality that have entered in the past will be shown to the IO. The IO is then supposed to check if any are you, and if so manually make the link. In the future it will be automatic once face recognition and biometric systems go live.

 

If you’re lucky and get a lazy IO your passports might not get linked, but if they are linked I guess entering under a different nationality is probably going to make the IO more suspicious and want to scrutinise your previous entries more closely.

[elviajero]

1 hour ago, Alint18 said:

I was planning on doing visa exempt but I can get a tourist visa instead if that is advised.

Given your time in the country it would be best to avoid visa exemption and enter with a Tourist Visa if you can.

[Alint18]

34 minutes ago, elviajero said:

Given your time in the country it would be best to avoid visa exemption and enter with a Tourist Visa if you can.

Ok thanks! 

[donnacha]

2 hours ago, elviajero said:

Swapping passports probably won’t help. When you present the Aussie passport your name and date of birth will get searched and matched to any other matched passport. It’s then up to the IO to manually link any matched passports.

That might be how it "probably" should work, but there is no such process.

The IO runs your name against the blacklist etc but, at this time, they do not have the capability to run your name and D.O.B against all past visitors to Thailand. It simply is not done. We know this because loads of dual password holders currently do exactly what the OP is suggesting.

Biometrics might make a difference going forward, but the OP has not said if he was fingerprinted during his last entry on his AU passport. If not, he can just go ahead and use his UK passport, it does not matter if they fingerprint him now because that data will be associated with his UK passport only, they cannot magically associate it with his AU passport.

Even if a dual passport holder is fingerprinted on both passports, we simply do not know if they will ever run that far more resource-intensive query against the fingerprints of all previous visitors. Fingerprints are complicated, you are talking about hours of compute time to run against even just the 40m sets accumulated during one year.

The purpose of the biometrics is to make sure that people already banned from Thailand don't come swanning back in with a fake passport. My guess is that they will run the fingerprints of all incoming visitors against the entire blacklist, and possibly other limited lists, but that is all.

Just as with the name + D.O.B. text search today, it is highly unlikely the designers will even provide an option for individual IOs to carry out a massive search against their entire accumulated library of fingerprints. It it would not be worth the expense-per-visitor, airports would grind to a halt, the system would be ripped out, bribes would have to be paid back, unthinkable!

Edited July 19, 2019 by donnacha

[elviajero]

35 minutes ago, donnacha said:

That might be how it "probably" should work, but there is no such process.

The IO runs your name against the blacklist etc but, at this time, they do not have the capability to run your name and D.O.B against all past visitors to Thailand. It simply is not done. We know this because loads of dual password holders currently do exactly what the OP is suggesting.

Biometrics might make a difference going forward, but the OP has not said if he was fingerprinted during his last entry on his AU passport. If not, he can just go ahead and use his UK passport, it does not matter if they fingerprint him now because that data will be associated with his UK passport only, they cannot magically associate it with his AU passport.

Even if a dual passport holder is fingerprinted on both passports, we simply do not know if they will ever run that far more resource-intensive query against the fingerprints of all previous visitors. Fingerprints are complicated, you are talking about hours of compute time to run against even just the 40m sets accumulated during one year.

The purpose of the biometrics is to make sure that people already banned from Thailand don't come swanning back in with a fake passport. My guess is that they will run the fingerprints of all incoming visitors against the entire blacklist, and possibly other limited lists, but that is all.

Just as with the name + D.O.B. text search today, it is highly unlikely the designers will even provide an option for individual IOs to carry out a massive search against their entire accumulated library of fingerprints. It it would not be worth the expense-per-visitor, airports would grind to a halt, the system would be ripped out, bribes would have to be paid back, unthinkable!

Read this, you might learn something ...

https://www.thaivisa.com/forum/topic/1034147-blacklisted-for-overstay-name-change-on-passport/?do=findComment&comment=12904326

 

Your entire post should be disregarded by anyone thinking of trying to beat the system by using two passports.

[ubonjoe]

8 hours ago, Alint18 said:

I want to come back to Thailand for 30 days later this year; I was going to use my new British passport to re-enter because immigration really didn’t like the ED visas in my Aussie passport. 

I don't think it is not so much to do with your non-ed visas and your extension of stay based upon attending school. It is more about the amount of time you have spent outside the country while on them. They may suspect you are not really attending classes which is required to get the extensions of stay.

[Leaver]

22 hours ago, Alint18 said:

I’m just trying to re enter for 30 days as painless as possible

Can you enter by land?

[Alint18]

1 hour ago, Leaver said:

Can you enter by land?

Yeah I could arrange that if you think it’s better? I hadn’t considered the difference in arrival method

[Leaver]

2 minutes ago, Alint18 said:

Yeah I could arrange that if you think it’s better? I hadn’t considered the difference in arrival method

To increase your chances, definitely something to consider.

[mngmn]

22 hours ago, Alint18 said:

Ahh ok, so if I show a new British passport that I’ve never used in Thailand, they are still going to match my details to my Aussie one and then probably be just as suspicious of me, maybe more ????????

I am in a similar situation to you and the IOs seem to prefer flicking though my passport rather than looking at the computer screen. I think this is especially the case since they are relying more on biometrics. Only one of my passports (with the least visas and entries) has got linked to biometrics.

 

No doubt I will have a problem in the future but for now it seems like the IOs I encountered have not connected the two passports. The current massive queues at immigration probably helps as well.

[donnacha]

On 7/19/2019 at 8:35 PM, elviajero said:

Read this, you might learn something ...

https://www.thaivisa.com/forum/topic/1034147-blacklisted-for-overstay-name-change-on-passport/?do=findComment&comment=12904326

 

Your entire post should be disregarded by anyone thinking of trying to beat the system by using two passports.

 

Firstly, that post is about someone who has been blacklisted trying to re-enter using a different passport. That is in no way close to the OP's situation.

 

As I said in my post, people who get blacklisted are a tiny subset of the 40 million people entering Thailand every year. Of course every incomer's details are checked against the blacklist on multiple levels, but it is a laughable to claim that they are also checked against every previous record.

Secondly, the writer bases his estimation of what the Thai immigration computer system should be able to do on, of all things, Google:
 

Quote

The time taken by the immigration system to do all of these checks against the millions of records held in its database is literally second.  Just think how quick Google displays a list when you enter a query into its search engine.

Thai Immigration is not Google. No system available commercially could cross-check against the 40 million fingerprint records per year in anything close to the time that would be necessary. Just five years of tourism at currents levels would create 200 million records, and fingerprint records are huge. What you are suggesting is Star Trek fantasy. Any real-time cross-referencing will almost certainly be limited to the fingerprints of those who have been black-listed.

You, too, have a broad idea of how these systems theoretically should work but no understanding of the practical realities. This was demonstrated by your confident assertion that the pre-biometric system somehow prevented dual passport holders from alternating between the two, when every week thousands of people did precisely that. I will take lived reality over your opinions any day.

Despite adopting a tone of supreme authority, you did not know anything that could actually assist the OP, either from expertise or from first-hand experience. Instead, you made stuff up, slapping in the word "probably" occasionally to justify your flights of fancy. Another armchair expert giving bad advice to people trying to make difficult decisions with real consequences. This baseless fear-mongering is shameful.

In the case of the OP, there is apparently no fingerprint record associated with his AU passport, and he has never been blacklisted. So, even in your Star Trek world of magical computers, there is absolutely no reason why he should not take the 100% legal step of using his UK passport on his next entry into Thailand.

He is not trying, as you put it, to "beat the system". He merely asked if using his new UK passport might cause problems. It will not. Even if they could connect the two passports, he is not using them to do anything dodgy such as back-to-back entries on tourist visas. He has been out of Thailand for a reasonable length of time.

People travel on different passports all the time, it is completely legal and completely accepted throughout the international air travel network. It does not matter that his reason to do so is that the ED visa stamps in his AU passport caused issues with the human Immigration Officers manually flipping through his passport.

When you know nothing about a subject, all you really have to do, to be of maximum utility, is to resist the temptation to post. Now you have persuaded the poor guy that he needs to enter by a land crossing, when his perfectly valid UK passport does not contain the problematic ED visas. Well done. Surely there must be less harmful ways to increase your post count?

Edited July 20, 2019 by donnacha

[NanLaew]

On 7/20/2019 at 12:52 AM, Alint18 said:

I was planning on doing visa exempt but I can get a tourist visa instead if that is advised.

Since your strategy appears to be doing things right with a new passport and maximizing future FIFO-type visits, I would opine that getting a visa would be best. Chances are you may wish to extend your next visit and the way I see Thai Immigration's Random Enumerator of Probabilities and Decisions working, If you apply for an extension of stay on a visa-exempt entry, although easy and not openly proscribed, that's two 'black marks' on your new passport.

[NanLaew]

On 7/20/2019 at 1:58 AM, elviajero said:

All I can say is probably. Ultimately the final stage of matching passports is made manually by the IO.

 

When — John Smith, 17/01/1970, the Brit — presents his passport any John Smiths  17/01/1970 regardless of nationality that have entered in the past will be shown to the IO. The IO is then supposed to check if any are you, and if so manually make the link. In the future it will be automatic once face recognition and biometric systems go live.

 

If you’re lucky and get a lazy IO your passports might not get linked, but if they are linked I guess entering under a different nationality is probably going to make the IO more suspicious and want to scrutinise your previous entries more closely.

My experience of happily using a different passport on alternate visits for over 14 years finally coming to a halt about 18 months ago supports this opinion. Just one immigration officer got all hot and bothered by it enough to get his supervisor involved. Even she couldn't answer my question if this was a new policy or just the officer doing more than his '50 seconds' worth of routine passport checking.

Edited July 20, 2019 by NanLaew
sp

[NanLaew]

On 7/20/2019 at 2:54 AM, donnacha said:

That might be how it "probably" should work, but there is no such process.

The IO runs your name against the blacklist etc but, at this time, they do not have the capability to run your name and D.O.B against all past visitors to Thailand. It simply is not done. We know this because loads of dual password holders currently do exactly what the OP is suggesting.

Biometrics might make a difference going forward, but the OP has not said if he was fingerprinted during his last entry on his AU passport. If not, he can just go ahead and use his UK passport, it does not matter if they fingerprint him now because that data will be associated with his UK passport only, they cannot magically associate it with his AU passport.

Even if a dual passport holder is fingerprinted on both passports, we simply do not know if they will ever run that far more resource-intensive query against the fingerprints of all previous visitors. Fingerprints are complicated, you are talking about hours of compute time to run against even just the 40m sets accumulated during one year.

The purpose of the biometrics is to make sure that people already banned from Thailand don't come swanning back in with a fake passport. My guess is that they will run the fingerprints of all incoming visitors against the entire blacklist, and possibly other limited lists, but that is all.

Just as with the name + D.O.B. text search today, it is highly unlikely the designers will even provide an option for individual IOs to carry out a massive search against their entire accumulated library of fingerprints. It it would not be worth the expense-per-visitor, airports would grind to a halt, the system would be ripped out, bribes would have to be paid back, unthinkable!

They started linking name, DOB and faces between passports years ago and long before fingerprinting of passengers started. Whether to make a meal of it was up to the immigration officer doing the arrival checks.

 

They're not scanning passengers fingerprints against 'millions' in any databases in real-time either. It's a data harvesting exercise at this juncture.  My first entry after the fingerprinting system was initiated was a full 10-point job ie. all fingers and both thumbs. First departure and subsequent re-entry after that were both totally fingerprintless. Yesterday's re-entry was only 4-points on one hand.

 

In the same way as Malaysian immigration does with their frequent visitors, when they stop asking for your fingerprints, then you know that they have everything they need on you in the database already and for me, that includes using both my passports at KUL.

[ThaiBunny]

On 7/20/2019 at 4:54 AM, donnacha said:

That might be how it "probably" should work, but there is no such process.

An IT contractor friend of mine once did some work for the Australian Department of Immigration trying to devise a system to match the same person using two different passports  - it was a dismal failure. The easiest way around it is to change your name legally in one but not both jurisdictions by, for example, adding a middle name of "James" in one jurisdiction and "John" in the other and having your passports reflect that name. Having the same initials in both means you don't have to remember how you sign your name if you always sign "F.J. Smith"

Edited July 20, 2019 by ThaiBunny

[jacko45k]

3 hours ago, donnacha said:

hai Immigration is not Google. No system available commercially could cross-check against the 40 million fingerprint records per year in anything close to the time that would be necessary. Just five years of tourism at currents levels would create 200 million records, and fingerprint records are huge

So not a single repeat/ multiple visitor in all those tourists. Things must be bad. 

[mngmn]

35 minutes ago, ThaiBunny said:

An IT contractor friend of mine once did some work for the Australian Department of Immigration trying to devise a system to match the same person using two different passports  - it was a dismal failure. The easiest way around it is to change your name legally in one but not both jurisdictions by, for example, adding a middle name of "James" in one jurisdiction and "John" in the other and having your passports reflect that name. Having the same initials in both means you don't have to remember how you sign your name if you always sign "F.J. Smith"

Not to mention that some cultures have vast numbers of people who share identical surnames, some cultures do not even use surnames! Armchair computer experts experts always forget that systems need to search global names not just those of bored UK expats posting on TV.

[donnacha]

1 hour ago, NanLaew said:

My experience of happily using a different passport on alternate visits for over 14 years finally coming to a halt about 18 months ago supports this opinion. Just one immigration officer got all hot and bothered by it enough to get his supervisor involved. Even she couldn't answer my question if this was a new policy or just the officer doing more than his '50 seconds' worth of routine passport checking.

 

Very useful information, thank you. It was a wonderful loophole while it lasted.

It worked for me the last time I entered, that was about 9 months ago. I might just have been lucky and I always avoid the Bangkok airports anyway.
 
In any case, the writing has been on the wall for a while now, I have made arrangements to spend my winters (and my money!) elsewhere in the region. I hope that Thailand will eventually return to a more relaxed attitude towards western tourists but I suspect that won't happen.

 

1 hour ago, ThaiBunny said:

The easiest way around it is to change your name legally in one but not both jurisdictions by, for example, adding a middle name of "James" in one jurisdiction and "John" in the other.

I have a vague memory that, once you change your name by deed poll, any passport issued after that must contain a note to that effect, including your old name. I presume it would be included in the manifest received by immigration before your plane lands and would be likely to attract extra scrutiny.

I would imagine that discovering you had passports with different versions of your name would convince Thai immigration you were a bad guy for sure ????
 

Edited July 21, 2019 by donnacha

[brewsterbudgen]

That might be how it "probably" should work, but there is no such process.

The IO runs your name against the blacklist etc but, at this time, they do not have the capability to run your name and D.O.B against all past visitors to Thailand. It simply is not done. We know this because loads of dual password holders currently do exactly what the OP is suggesting.

Biometrics might make a difference going forward, but the OP has not said if he was fingerprinted during his last entry on his AU passport. If not, he can just go ahead and use his UK passport, it does not matter if they fingerprint him now because that data will be associated with his UK passport only, they cannot magically associate it with his AU passport.

Even if a dual passport holder is fingerprinted on both passports, we simply do not know if they will ever run that far more resource-intensive query against the fingerprints of all previous visitors. Fingerprints are complicated, you are talking about hours of compute time to run against even just the 40m sets accumulated during one year.

The purpose of the biometrics is to make sure that people already banned from Thailand don't come swanning back in with a fake passport. My guess is that they will run the fingerprints of all incoming visitors against the entire blacklist, and possibly other limited lists, but that is all.

Just as with the name + D.O.B. text search today, it is highly unlikely the designers will even provide an option for individual IOs to carry out a massive search against their entire accumulated library of fingerprints. It it would not be worth the expense-per-visitor, airports would grind to a halt, the system would be ripped out, bribes would have to be paid back, unthinkable!

How far back does the blacklist data base of fingerprints go? 5 years, 10 years?

Sent from my SM-G930F using Thailand Forum - Thaivisa mobile app

[donnacha]

20 minutes ago, brewsterbudgen said:

How far back does the blacklist data base of fingerprints go? 5 years, 10 years?

It would make sense for fingerprinting to have been part of the deportation process for quite a long time but I don't remember reading it mentioned here. Perhaps some member who went through that unfortunate process can let us know if they did get fingerprinted.

The habit of governments almost everywhere has been to retain this information, once they capture it, for as long as possible. That does not necessarily mean, however, that Thai Immigration would act on it, unless you specifically received a lifetime ban.

 

Loads more people have been deported and blacklisted for shorter periods for non-violent crimes, especially overstays and working illegally. In those cases, I have heard that they subject you to more scrutiny but are okay about letting you in if your ban has ended.

 

 

Edited July 21, 2019 by donnacha

[ThaiBunny]

1 hour ago, donnacha said:

I have a vague memory that, once you change your name by deed poll, any passport issued after that must contain a note to that effect, including your old name. I presume it would be included in the manifest received by immigration before your plane lands and would be likely to attract extra scrutiny.

I can assure you based on personal experience that that ain't so