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ResourcesVisa & Immigration LawVisa NewsFurther Crackdowns on Overstay for Thai Visa Holders

Further Crackdowns on Overstay for Thai Visa Holders

Transcript of the above video:

In this video today, we are going to do an update regarding, immigration, Thai Immigration, Thai visas. It has kind of been a while on this channel that we have done much regarding Thai visas because quite frankly, there hasn’t really been a lot to report as far as major changes or anything like that. 

But that being said, a recent article from the Nation, which you can find at www nation multimedia dot com,   a recent article in the nation, the headline, “The Police Crackdown  Targets Overstaying Foreign Criminals”, this was published November 12, 2017 and to quote directly from the article, “Deputy Prime Minister General Prawit Wongsuwan has instructed National Security Agencies to get tough on foreign criminals and “influential figures” following the discovery that nearly 100,000 foreigners were overstaying their visas in Thailand. “  I am skipping ahead and quoting further “following the report on over stayers, Immigration Colonel, (I am going to paraphrase here a little bit),  quoted Prawit as instructing the military police and administrative officials to seriously crackdown on transnational criminal network members, especially those who have disguised themselves as tourists”, further quoting, “Prawit also urged the Royal Thai Police to check on incoming and outgoing visitors, and implement greater measures to control, monitor and act against those who have overstayed”. Let me re-read something because this I think is something that is rather important even to those, setting aside foreign criminals, even to just day to day travelers coming to Thailand. First of all they note “especially those who have disguised themselves as tourists. Prawit also urged on the Thai Police to check on incoming and outgoing visitors and implement greater measures to control, monitor and act against those who have overstayed”.

Now, I can’t stress this enough, this is rather important.  Yet again I think we are looking at some crackdowns with respect to tourist visa holders. We saw this about 18 months, 2 years, since the real shakeup started occurring. At the beginning of 2017 we saw some serious changes with respect to the underlying regulations, but it’s been a little while since we’ve seen this serious crackdown. It appears that the powers to be within the Immigration structure and higher are going all the way to the deputy prime minister in this case, are taking this case seriously because there appears to be at least a presumed criminal element that associated with overstaying in Thailand. I am going to set that aside and just speak generally to this. Again, I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. Since the implementation of the so called “good guys in, bad guys out” policy, and the underlying regulations and procedures associated therewith, the air of  being able to live in Thailand on a tourist visa or some other methodology whereby you can cobble together 30 day stamps or whatever, that’s effectively gone, that ended quite some time ago.

I think that this is just pretty much going to be happening in regular intervals and I think it’s going to be, not only a way to go ahead and deal with it from a law enforcement tactic to use the immigration to perhaps target what are otherwise foreign criminals, but also people who are just not necessarily criminals, they are just people who want to live in Thailand but they’re trying to use things like tourist visas to do it. I think they’re going to get caught up in this net as well. I think it is very safe  to say it’s  probably a good idea if you wish to stay in Thailand long term, start looking at non-immigrant visa categories or other methods of remaining here in the Kingdom, such as permanent residence or the elite card  because the air of being able to this this on what are ostensibly  temporary status stamps, it’s going by the way side and clearly the immigration apparatus as well as the government authorities relevant to not only  immigration but  law enforcement as well, take this extremely seriously and for that reason, I think that these policies are going to continue to be implemented and the enforcement strategy are going to continue to  rather assertive and for that reason, I think it is pretty safe to say, remaining in Thailand long term on a tourist visa is really not a viable option, at least moving forward.