Transcript of the above video:

The title of this video might seem a little confusing, “the return of overstay” in Thailand, because many people will probably say to themselves, "did overstay go anywhere?"

In a very real sense it kind of did although it didn't legally. We have still had to deal with folks, deal with overstay throughout the COVID situation even up to now but as we have seen things ease up and specially as border restrictions are easing; travel rules are changing, we are seeing it being much easier to get into Thailand. We are also, sort of concomitant with that, also seeing many folks in the Immigration apparatus being less and less amenable to exercising discretion to extend status in-country. This may be resulting in folks ending up in a situation where they are going to go into overstay. 

So the thing to take away from this video is that, yes things are getting better from the standpoint, it looks like it's going to be more feasible to do things like Visa runs and border runs but with that is the fact that I think we are going to start seeing Thai Immigration taking a harder and harder line on folks being in Thailand long-term. Remember, the default position is if you want to change visa status, you need to leave and come back in if you are in Non-immigrant or Tourist Visa status. The other default position prior to COVID was you can't live in Thailand on a Tourist Visa. As we saw because people had no choice, they got put into a situation where they had to extend status and they were granted extensions based on Thai Immigration's discretion.

I think that will slowly start to taper off if not quickly start to taper off and for this reason I think it is probably likely we are going to see overstay looming back on people's horizon who wish to stay in Thailand long term.