Thai immigration have been working hard on new ways to better process passengers arriving at the airport and also to keep out unwanted people such as criminals. To help them with this, the Immigration Service has spent 76 million baht on buying 16 Auto Channel machines which will be installed later this year at Suvarnabhumi Airport. The passengers will insert their passports into the machines which will also scan their fingerprints at the same time. This process will take only 20 seconds which will help speed up immigration lines at arrivals. Thai passengers and foreign diplomats will be the first to be processed by the machines.
Thailand is also looking into using Advance Passenger Processing (APP). Under the APP rules, all airlines will need to provide the Thai Immigration Service with information on all passengers and crew, including all transit passengers, travelling to Thailand. This information is collected at check-in through the APP system and will then be transmitted to Thailand for use by the Thai Immigration Service prior to the arrival of the aircraft. The data transmitted to Thailand is cross-checked against Thailand’s immigration databases. The benefits of APP is that undesirable people can be rejected even before boarding the plane. Passengers will also benefit as they won’t need to fill in an arrival card. At the moment, there is no date for when this will start in Thailand.
In related news, the website for the Thai Ministry of Foreign Affairs has updated it’s page on required documents for “tourist visa”. Thai embassies have been told not only to collect the “airline ticket or confirmation slip with flight number and date of entry/exit” but also “hotel reservation in Thailand with name and dates of checking in/out”. However, it is unclear how strict they will be. For years Immigration have required a return flight ticket before allowing entry to Thailand. But, they hardly ever asked for this. It is presumed it will be the same for the address of the hotel. Anyway, if you are staying with a friend in Thailand, it is acceptable to give their address when filling out the form. Normally, if you dress smart and don’t act suspiciously then they are more flexible with the rules.
Main source: Bangkok Post
Has an exact date for the fingerprinting been set yet? I was hoping to visit Thailand in December but will choose elsewhere if it means not being treated like a criminal as I enter a country on holiday.
Have you tried going to the USA recently? To answer your question, probably not until next year.
Thanks. I haven’t been to the USA for 15 years, although, as a Canadian, I am CURRENTLY exempted from the fingerprinting. However, I don’t want to put up with all of the other TSA nonsense.
Hi Richard,
Here we are in February 2012, could you do an update on this story for us please?
In the light of the current Iranian bomb suspects story, it would be interesting to see how the fingerprinting is actually going to be used once its up and running.
Question: How will it help?
If it is to check that a passport holder really is that person, what access to other nations’ fingerprint/criminal record databases will Thailand realistically be able to link to? (or Indonesia, whose airport fingerprinting system is already up and running)
Nobody seems to be asking the question of how they will effectively be able to use the fingerprint data they capture at a port or airport to enhance national security.
What is your opinion?