Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing Thai Immigration becoming more proactive in apprehending overstayers here in the Kingdom of Thailand. I thought of making this video after reading a recent article from the Phuket News, that is thephuketnews.com, the article is titled: Ukrainian man arrested in Phuket airport, charged for 114 days of overstay. "Immigration Officers at Phuket International Airport have reported the arrest of a 23-year-old Ukrainian national for overstaying his visa. The man now faces a 5-year ban on entering the Kingdom." Quoting further: "The arrest took place at the International Departures hall, as reported by Phuket Immigration through the Phuket Immigration Checkpoint page on Facebook."

I thought of making this primarily because this is kind of a real departure for Immigration generally. In the past, it was kind of like the airport was like if you will, if you were playing a game of tag or something, it is kind of like the airport was like "touching base" insofar as once you sort of got to the airport and are checking out of the country, in the past you didn't need to necessarily worry about your overstay because at the point of which you got to the airport it was sort of viewed just like you were voluntarily, you were sort of turning yourself in and they go into that in the article. But in this case this is the second article I have discussed on this channel coming out of Phuket where Immigration actually apprehended someone in the airport; they actually made it a point of apprehending, basically booking that person, putting them through due process essentially for arrest and then because there was arrest, there is a five-year ban on that person returning to the country. Now I suspect they probably don't have the resources to do this like just all the time but this is becoming more frequent and I think it is worth noting.

So something to keep in mind, it is just one more reason if you will to stay in Visa compliance and not try to kind of, how do I put it, kind of finesse the system for lack of a better term. You need to stay in compliance; you need to stay in status before leaving because as we can see, there really is no home base now in the sense that there is no like "Oh, I made it to the airport, therefore I can just pay the fine and get out of here!" No it looks like more and more, Thai Immigration is looking to arrest folks in that scenario and then subsequently they are banned for five years.