Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing quite a number of so-called Visa checks if you want to call it that. I thought of making this video after reading recent article from the Phuket News, that's thephuketnews.com, the article is titled: Phuket Immigration crackdown results in 188 arrests in one year. A lot of information in this article. I urge those who are watching this video go check out that article in detail because what becomes clear to me when reading this is, first off the article is specific to Phuket, and as we have discussed in other videos, different Immigration offices take different approaches to how they are going to enforce Thai Immigration Law. That said, we have seen a number of trends occur in Phuket that have later gone nationwide. One notable thing that happened was the so-called Phuket "Sandbox" initiative which for quite some time was effectively one of the only ways effectively to get into Thailand and then things started to open up nationwide more and more. So while I won't call Phuket the epicentre of Thai Immigration Policy by any stretch of the imagination, I will say that trends that occur in Phuket tend to happen on a broader context over time. So when I look at stuff going on in Phuket, I am always kind of like "okay, but that might be something we see happening in other places later", and sometimes it does and sometimes it doesn't but it is worth noting nonetheless. 

Again, the article is titled: Phuket Immigration crackdown results in 188 arrests in one year; gain, thephuketnews.com. Quoting directly: "Col. Thanet, who continues to serve Phuket Immigration Chief, (I think they meant "serve as") made his statement during a meeting with relevant officials on Oct 30. The information was then updated in a separate news release on Phuket Immigration's Facebook page." Quoting further: "The statistics cover the 12-month period from November 1, 2022 (Thailand's reopening date) through October 31, 2023.” So it is worth noting where these stats come from. It is only the past year; it's only since the reopening of Thailand and it only pertains to Phuket, these numbers. Quoting further: "Phuket Immigration's activities during this period included checking 5,609 foreign nationals for Visa violations." What did “checking” entail?

As we have discussed in other videos, Thai Immigration has increasingly taken a proactive stance with regard to things like overstay. They also, through the digitization process, are now able to correlate, collate and ascertain data pertaining to Thai Immigration matters in a much more efficient manner. What are we talking about? Well they are able to essentially cross check people's addresses with their date for example of Visa expiration and this is resulting in a number of spot checks basically. Thai Immigration Inspectors actually go to places where people have listed their addresses being and if they find them at that address they go ahead and deport them for overstay if their visa has expired. Again those could be considered Visa checks. I guess you could argue that people that go through an Immigration checkpoint point down in Phuket might arguably be part of an Immigration check. I don't think that is what they are talking about here. I think that they are talking about specific, basically beyond standard protocol kind of interactions between Thai Immigration and foreign nationals here in the Kingdom. This is noteworthy because honestly that is a lot of folks that have had sort of special attention paid to them by Thai Immigration. And as we have discussed in other videos, also mentioned in here, they also note that there were 6,077 Visa checks at "target locations".

So whatever that means again, what it is showing me is that there is a trend going on, especially in Phuket, but one that could go nationwide of even more stringent enforcement of relevant Thai Immigration Law.