Transcript of the above video: 

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing, well foreigners behaving badly, and what I would refer to in an American Immigration context as "expedited deportation". It now appears that Thailand is, well I should say the Prime Minister here in Thailand is taking measures to go ahead and create a system where expedited deportation will be possible for foreigners who are engaged in illicit activity or those who are violating Thai Law basically 'Foreigners Behaving Badly' is sort of the phrase I've come up with. Those folks are going to have a situation where they are going to find themselves swiftly deported, it looks like in the future if they are engaged in inappropriate behaviour. I thought of making this video after reading a recent article from the Bangkok Post, bangkokpost.com, the article is titled: PM Anutin wants foreign culprits deported faster. Quoting directly: "Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul has ordered legal amendments to speed up the deportation of foreign criminals to prevent them from repeating their offenses in Thailand, according to a Government Spokesperson. Mr. Anutin has assigned Deputy Prime Minister Pakorn Nilprapunt, the Immigration Bureau and the Ministry of Interior - and bear in mind, the Prime Minister is also the Minister of Interior - so they are tasking a Deputy Prime Minister specifically, the Immigration Bureau specifically, and the Ministry of Interior on all of this to deal with this problem, so I have to imagine this is going to happen in a pretty expedited manner. Quoting further: "To draw up amendments to the Immigration Law and related regulations to speed up deportations, Rachada Dhnadirek said after the Cabinet Meeting on Tuesday." 

So I have talked about this previously. I think under this Parliament, we are going to see serious reform of the Immigration System, and it looks to me like the Prime Minister is starting with enforcement, especially as it pertains to deportation. That said, quoting further: "According to Ms. Rachada, the Prime Minister told the Cabinet Meeting that although foreign culprits are being arrested and prosecuted, the deportation process was time consuming." I made another video contemporaneously with this one discussing the fact that - just making an ALERT on all of this - in this video, I'm going to dig into the nitty gritty of a couple of things here. One, basically detention in Thailand for criminal behaviour, so you basically have been arrested. Matters pertaining to deportation as well as extradition; extradition actually plays in a little bit here. That said, quoting further: "If foreigners face criminal charges in Thailand, the legal process must be concluded before deportation can take place. They can be released on bail but are usually required to surrender their passports. At this stage, some will go back and resume their normal criminal activities, authorities say. Once the local criminal charges have been dealt with, foreigners ordered deported will be taken to an Immigration Detention Centre until the order is carried out." Quoting further: "The Prime Minister told officials to prepare the legal amendments promptly in accordance with National Security, public interest and international obligations of Thailand. Quote: "Thailand is glad to welcome foreign tourists, investors, and business operators, Ms. Rachada quoted Prime Minister Anutin as saying in the Cabinet meeting. "For those who arrive and violate laws or cause damage to the country, they must be prosecuted decisively and deported as soon as possible." 

So going back here, and I made another video contemporaneously with this one where I just discuss this in general and I wanted to provide an ALERT so that people understood, "hey, as I've discussed in other videos, I think under this Parliament we are going to see major changes to Immigration Law. The ALERT was made; this looks like it's happening, so that that was why I made that video. 

That said, the nitty gritty I want to jump into real quick here. I want to quote again: "If foreigners face criminal charges in Thailand, the legal process must be concluded before deportation can take place." Well maybe, maybe not. As discussed in prior videos, in instances where a foreign power, so a foreign state that Thailand has relations with, wants to extradite an individual, especially where the extradition occurs with that individual's country of origin, so the passport that they are using for their physical presence in Thailand, there are situations where Thailand will forgo prosecution in Thailand for whatever maybe offense occurred in Thailand, and just hand them off for extradition, basically citing criminal charges, they cite National Security, and they say, "look, we are just cancelling the Visa, you are deported", and they deport them back to their country of origin. I have talked about that in prior videos. That is sort of for lack of a better term what the Thais would describe as "expedited deportation". Although there is no codified regulatory scheme that deals with that, that process does already exist, that is possible. But when we are talking about purely internal, so what we would say intra-Thailand criminal matters, current procedure dictates that look they have to go through due process, they have to be adjudicated guilty and if adjudicated guilty, then at that point, they may have to serve a sentence in Thailand, it depends on what the underlying possible crime is, and then they would be deported. 

It looks to me like what Anutin is trying to do is streamline that process, streamline that process to the point that it looks to me like maybe there is another option where they simply say, "look, you've been cited for whatever; we can put you through this adjudication, or we could just do what we would call in the context of the American Immigration System, they can just put you through what is called expedited deportation, deport you out, and presumably Blacklist you. When it comes to expedited deportation in the United States, and when we are talking about that we are talking about the IIRAIRA amendments to the Immigration Act back during the '90s, they basically created this thing called Expedited Deportation or Expedited Removal whereby one can be adjudicated as removable. Oftentimes they will give people an option, do you wish to voluntarily depart or do you want to be expeditiously removed. If one goes through the actual process of expedited removal, they are then banned from returning to the United States for a minimum of five years, and even after that, you're probably going to have to get a waiver in order to come back in to the US. I could see a situation arise where the law here in Thailand is amended to look something similar to that. 

That said, long story short, it is clear that authorities in Thailand are tired of the antics of certain segments of the foreign community here in Thailand, both in terms of overt organized crime as well as just sort of spontaneously occurring bad behaviour. And as a result, under this new government which has a much more nationalistic streak than anything we have seen in recent years, it looks to me like they are going to take measures to go ahead and deal with this summarily. So how this plays out remains to be seen, but we will definitely be keeping folks updated on this channel as the situation evolves.