Problem Foreigners Discussed at Meeting
A meeting was held at The Green Park Resort on 12th April with many Police divisions and foreign businessmen attending to discuss about the problems relating to illegal activities carried out by foreigners in Thailand.
Since the recent arrest of drug dealer Miss Sonnoi Pholjaroen which involved Paul Bernard Mcateer from Northern Ireland, it is clear that many foreigners that travel as tourists are doing illegal activities here in the Kingdom of Thailand.
This meeting was held to discuss how officials can inspect foreigners’ behavior in Thailand.
At the moment foreigners are already checked on arrival at the airport when they arrive and if they are on the blacklist then they will deported. However, there are many foreign criminals who still come through.
Hotels are obliged to report foreign guests to the Immigration Department. However, there are many guest houses and small apartments that don’t know about this law and more announcements must be made to them to cooperate for easier inspections when needed.
In general, most foreigners stay amongst groups of their own nationalities. They do activities together and some even register their residence according to the law when they buy properties as a company.
This makes their residence a “private zone” and is difficult to inspect because these foreigners would say that others are not allowed to enter being private property. The authorities would be required to acquire a search warrant which is a lengthy process.
Banglamung District Chief announced that there shouldn’t be any places that are not allowed for the police to enter for a search any more. The only places that police in Thailand cannot search are embassies.
A suggestion was made at the meeting that each group of nationalities should have a leader so that the police could contact directly if there was a criminal element suspected from people of that nationality.
All this was discussed at the meeting and more work will be done on how to solve the problems of foreign mafias and terrorists that enter the country as tourists to do illegal activities in Thailand.
Pattaya People