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Thai Visa Overstay: Update on Immigration Crackdowns in Thailand

Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are giving another update on Immigration Crackdowns here in the Kingdom. 

Those who have watched this video with any frequency will probably know this is not an uncommon occurrence lo these past roughly two years. The Kingdom has experienced a number of Immigration Crackdowns especially as a result of the new Operation X-ray Outlaw Foreigner initiative which has been brought to the forefront by the new Immigration Chief who is Surachate Hakpan, aka Big Joke, and these crackdowns continue, these raids continue; right up to this very day, this very moment. 

I haven't done an update on these so I have got a couple of articles and just some other information and observation associated therewith.  

One article comes from Khao Sod English that's khaosodenglish.com, the title of the article is: 522 ForeignersGgot X-ray Outlawed so Far this Month, I don't mean to chuckle a little bit but I think we all find the title of this particular initiative somewhat funny to some extent, so phrases like “X-ray Outlawed” kind of always give me pause. That being said this is a serious matter and I'm going to quote directly from that article very quickly. "Police arrested more than 500 people in their sweep of foreigners violating Immigration Law this month. At 1 a.m. this morning, Immigration Deputy Police Chief Major General Itthipol Itthisaronnachai invited the media to the Chana Songkram Police Station in Khaosan Road where he displayed some of the 522 foreigners arrested in the past month."  So that is back on February 15th, and just very quickly there were there were a number of places that were actually raided but again 522 foreigners got  "x-ray outlawed". Moving forward in time, quoting directly from the Nation, nationmultimedia.com, March 1st, 2019. Title: Almost 500 Arrested in Nationwide Immigration Crackdown. Quoting directly, "more than 400 foreigners and 79 Thais allegedly involved in Immigration offences were arrested on Thursday after raids across Thailand. Quoting further, ”Of the 417 foreigners who were arrested, 248 were charged with illegal entry to Thailand while 16 others were charged with overstaying Visa. Another 153 were charged with violating the Royal Decree on the management of migrant employment or other related immigration charges. 

Again the thing to take away from this video is in the past few weeks Immigration has continued their raids. As I have stated in other videos, I think it is very important that foreigners who are coming to Thailand be aware of the fact that the Thai Authorities do not anymore have the paradigm that Visa and Immigration violations are some sort of administrative thing.  More and more they are viewing it is a law enforcement issue and in many ways it is a criminal offense and they are treating it as such.  So those who are illegally entering the Kingdom, that's probably not a good idea at all and those who are looking to overstay, maybe it is a good idea to think again. Maintenance of one's Thai Visa status is of the utmost importance moving forward.  Yes there was a time when the Immigration Apparatus was much more lax in their mindset as well as in their enforcement initiatives but moving forward I don't think it is particularly prudent to go ahead and assume that that is going to be the case in the future and I'm pretty sure I am probably going to do at least a couple more updates regarding Immigration Crackdown and in those updates were probably going to be citing even more people who are arrested and subsequently deported. One thing to be very clear about is these folks that get arrested in these raids, they are deported and they are blacklisted and as I have mentioned in other videos on this channel, once you are blacklisted the database with respect to the blacklist is much more coordinated now with all the border checkpoints throughout Thailand. It is much more coordinated with Ministry of Foreign Affairs and therefore Thai Embassies and Consulates abroad. I believe it is now becoming coordinated on a global scale through the app system that is utilized by the PBX folks which is sort of the coordination team for Immigration matters and they are informing carriers abroad, "don't allow people on the planes that have prior blacklisting issues with respect to Thailand." 

So this isn't something to take lightly. They are taking this stuff seriously and those who are arrested in Immigration raids and found to be over staying, having illegally entered or some other criminal offense, they are going to be detained, deported and it is very unlikely that they are ever going to be able to return to the Kingdom of Thailand again.