Thai National to Hawaii

[lomuamart]

I might know a bit about visas to Thailand but I know nothing about visas to the USA.
We've got some American cousins on here so I'm hoping you might be able advise.
Anyway, a Thai lady I know is planning/hoping to go on a Thai organised tour to Las Vegas for 7-10 days. I've been helping her with the questionaire the tour company in BKK supply. That was pretty straightforward.
She's got her own company here and suggests she earns fairly well. I do appreciate that there will be more questions from the US Embassy and probably evidence to produce but she's not at that stage yet.
So, she reckons a tour group to Las Vegas and then she loses herself and flies alone with her visa to Hawaii.
There she "knows" a Thai person who knows an American. She can work - without permit - selling ice cream and fruit. She reckons she'll get a salary of around 80,000 THB a month.
Well, there you go. I'm not exactly wet behind the gills about this potential setup but would like to hear from any Americanos that are a bit more street savvy. IMHO, it stinks of everything, including human trafficking.
Give me reasons to put her off doing this - apart from the usual working without permit, jailing and deportation.
Thanks.

[Big Boy]

Can't help in any way, but very interested to see how this one pans out.

[PeteC]

I don't know what else to say that you haven't already. One further point is that the tour group could lose it's license to operate to the US if one of their customers does a runner. The tour company is responsible for the people under their care to assure they abide by immigration rules and exit the country on schedule.

What would a Brit say if as an example we were talking about a foreigner going to the UK and doing the same thing? I think we would have some pretty aggressive suggestions such as, "give me her name and I'll make sure she doesn't get a visa..." I could say the same thing but I wouldn't want to put you or the forum in that position.

If breaking the law doesn't bother her, it makes her the same as the sleez expats who come here and try to disappear. Does she really want to be like that? She will get caught sooner or later and jail time before forced deportation and no hope in hell of ever going back the the US in her lifetime is a certainty.

Maybe she'll stumble on the first hurdle, let's hope so. Getting a tourist visa is not that easy for a single woman, job or no job here. Pete

[lomuamart]

Thanks for the heads up, Pete.
A said, arrest, jail, deportation, no way back are the least of it.
Maybe I wasn't clear about things. I see this as a mafia deal. So, do they exist selling ice cream and fruit in Hawaii?

[PeteC]

I doubt it's any kind of mafia in the ice cream and fruit business. However, it could be a front and she could end up in a brothel with no passport working off a lot of money for years at XXX a pop to gain her freedom. Those type stories are everywhere. I was assuming she knew her friend well enough that something like that wouldn't be the case. If the woman in Hawaii is not really an old friend but simply an acquaintance, the odds go way up that the deal is dangerous

Is she plain or a looker? Makes a big difference to those guys in that business. Pete

[PeteC]

Read this, and have her read it if she can, or translate it with Google:

Shandra Woworuntu: My life as a sex-trafficking victim

http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-35846207

EDIT: I have to go to a school show now. Anything else and I'll reply in the wee hours.

[migrant]

I doubt it's any kind of mafia in the ice cream and fruit business. However, it could be a front and she could end up in a brothel with no passport working off a lot of money for years at XXX a pop to gain her freedom. Those type stories are everywhere. I was assuming she knew her friend well enough that something like that wouldn't be the case. If the woman in Hawaii is not really an old friend but simply an acquaintance, the odds go way up that the deal is dangerous

Is she plain or a looker? Makes a big difference to those guys in that business. Pete

I, too, have heard of this happening. Also possible for her to earn 80,000 baht selling ice cream, but that does not go very far with Hawaii's cost of living.

Travel between states isn't hard here, but does require ID so if the travel company lists her as missing, immigration may be on the lookout.

To get to Hawaii is by plane, or boat, of course, so she would have to show ID unless smuggled somewhere

[PeteC]

There is no immigration after the initial entry. A person is free to travel anywhere they want within the country. It would have to be the airline check-in desk computers that carried the alert about a person. Pete

[JamesWest]

As a America who lived in Los Angeles for 58 years and owned a house on the big island of Hawaii, I can tell you it is expensive as hell to live in Hawaii. 80,000 baht is about $2,285 USD. If she is kept as a slave, meaning she pays for nothing, goes no where, is totally controlled by her employers, and if they pay her, maybe she might come out ahead. But $2,285 in Hawaii is like trying to live on 10,000 baht a month in Thailand.

Her cellphone bill alone will be 2000 baht a month. Of course her employers are just going to take her passport first thing and chain her to a bed so she is not going to have a phone.

She will need to use her full name and passport number (or state ID) to buy a airline ticket to Hawaii. Because you need to be pre screened by the TSA as a function of buying a ticket. Even just flying from Los Angeles to Las Vegas. No one gets on a plane in the USA without getting prescreened and then screened at the airport by the TSA.

How is she going to pay for the ticket to Hawaii? About 15k-20k baht. Credit card in Thailand before she leaves or in the USA? A foreign national from Thailand is buying a one way ticket with cash at the last minute? For sure she will be selected for additional screening by the TSA. Of course this is not immigration, this is aircraft security.

One thing to think about. The USA is a police state now. Real police, not the fake Thai kind. You need the permission of the Department of Homeland Security to leave the country by air. Just like Soviet Russia. So she is for a rude awaking if she gets into a Immigration database for not leaving on the original visa and then trying to use her original Thai passport to leave the USA by air.

So she can never get out of the country without facing the music at some point.

And if she works and does not have a tax payer ID number she will be guilty of tax evasion. Of course in a all cash business this is not a problem. She can't open a bank account without a tax payer ID number.

She will need some type of state issued ID if stopped by the police. I guess her passport might work, if the visa has not expired. It is illegal to go out in public without state issued ID. The police by law in the USA cannot ask about your immigration status when stopped, but no proper ID can be a problem. Her Thai ID will work if it is not expired and she sticks to the "I am a tourist story". The USA police have instant access to the NCIC and ALWAYS check everyone they stop for arrest warrants and receive info on prior arrests.

Also tell your friend, that just like in Thailand, prostitution is illegal in the USA. You will be arrested, processed, held and then brought before a judge, sentenced and unlike the BIB like in Pattaya, she will have to pay way more than 100 baht. Then she will have a criminal record that sort of follows you around your whole life in the USA.

Is she going to send money back to Thailand? How? I have never done this because I am a real person with credit cards and bank accounts, but how is she going to transfer say a thousand US dollars out of the country? Go to Western Union? I am not sure how that works, but we have millions of people in the country illegally now doing it so must be easy.

I don't mean to make light of the sex trafficking business, but if she is super attractive she is better off just flying to Los Angeles, going to Thai Town, (the largest group of Thais outside Thailand) run some on line ads for boom boom and make 9000 baht a "date" in L.A. And just stay off the radar until she can get proper fake ID. Then just rent a apartment with friends. If she is really hot then no problem at all, she will have a boyfriend in no time if she wants out of the business.

And if she gets married, becomes a US citizen, she will still have to file and pay taxes for the rest of her life, even if she moves back to Thailand!

[centermid7]

" It is illegal to go out in public without state issued ID. "

I pretty much stopped reading right there. The whole post is a bunch of overdramatic claptrap.

Sorry dude. A swing and a miss - a BIG miss!

[VincentD]

I still wouldn't advise doing what she plans to do.

Suspect we're not getting the whole story here. She seems to want to run away from something possibly quite worrying for her if she is to abandon a successful business just like that. Knowing someone who 'knows' someone smells like a Nigerian scam scenario, and if it's just for money lying on your back Singapore is just a 2 hour plane ride away and prostitution is legal there.

[lomuamart]

I don't think it's a case of some hidden agenda but I do think it's a case of naivety that will hopefully blow over in time.
Anyway, I think the two of us have managed to scare the crap out of her and she's now not going - we'll see.
I reckon that the "80,000 THB" a month and what it won't buy was the clincher. She didn't seem swayed by all the awful things that could happen to her. Money rules.
And she's attractive but in her 50s. I didn't go on about her age!!

[HHTel]

" It is illegal to go out in public without state issued ID. "

I pretty much stopped reading right there. The whole post is a bunch of overdramatic claptrap.

Sorry dude. A swing and a miss - a BIG miss!

"It is illegal to drive in Thailand on red number plates after 6pm" touche.

I'm not really a pessimist but this story rings true. I've personally met 2 people who were friends of my wife's family who had similar experiences and (thankfully) escaped after a few months.

THIS DOES HAPPEN ----- MAKE NO MISTAKE!

[JamesWest]

I don't think it's a case of some hidden agenda but I do think it's a case of naivety that will hopefully blow over in time.
Anyway, I think the two of us have managed to scare the crap out of her and she's now not going - we'll see.
I reckon that the "80,000 THB" a month and what it won't buy was the clincher. She didn't seem swayed by all the awful things that could happen to her. Money rules.
And she's attractive but in her 50s. I didn't go on about her age!!

tell her to get a Badoo app on her phone and start flirting with expats in HH.

[kendo]

Alarming naivety breaking away from a tour group would instantly make you a criminal in a small way for breaking visa rules and maybe the subject of a large emergency services man/woman hunt with concern for welfare their would be a massive cost attached to that.

The suggestion of making that kind of money to a Thai would seem great but I'm sure there's plenty of low class locals that would work for anything they could raise.
This for me has got exploration written on an neon sign in down town Vegas.

James added some some good value to this thread however prostitution is legal in one state that I know of is Navada.