Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are asking the question, "Two years in jail for overstay in 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 at 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 from entering the Kingdom." 

As per usual, a lot of information in there from the Phuket News. I urge those who are watching this video to go check out that article in detail. I am going to quote another quick excerpt from this: "What is often overlooked by the media is that Section 81 of the Immigration Act also prescribes up to two years in prison as a potential punishment for overstaying." Yeah, that is kind of something people do overlook, myself included that yes there is a provision in Thai Immigration Law that can prescribe prison time for people that overstay. 

Now me personally, I have never seen this actually basically enforced or applied to anyone. It seems to be as you can see in the article, the priority of Thai Immigration in circumstances involving overstay is to go ahead and get people deported; they basically want to get them out of the country and then blacklisted. That's basically the priority but yeah it is possible in theory I guess you could say, to see somebody being sentenced to jail time here in Thailand simply for overstaying their visa. 

So the thing to take away from this video as with many videos we make on the topic of overstay, yeah just stay in compliance. You want to make sure that you stay in compliance, you don't fall into overstay. I am making another video contemporaneously with this one where we will go into the analysis on how Law Enforcement apprehended this person because this person was actually at the airport. That being said, the main thrust of this video is to understand yeah they do actually have the ability to put you in jail for being on overstay here in Thailand and that is just one more reason to maintain Visa compliance when visiting or living here in the Kingdom of Thailand.