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Immigration Raids in Thailand: Updated Information

Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are yet again discussing Immigration raids here in the Kingdom and while we haven't had really one of these videos in probably six or eight weeks there have been developments. I have also been kind of keeping tabs on it and although specifically there haven't been at least a lot of heavily reported raids there have been small incidents which I didn't really feel warranted a video unto itself and so I decided to go ahead and try to kind of save it up if you will and some recent events have transpired which has caused us to go ahead and make this video because there has been quite a bit going on. 

In a recent article from the Bangkok Post, bangkokpost.com, the article is titled: Immigration Crackdown nets 2,200 in Isan. Quoting directly: "Khonkaen: Immigration Police have arrested more than 2,200 Foreign and Thai suspects for various offenses as part of a Crackdown in the northeast during the past two weeks. Teams of officers staged a series of raids," note that, "that resulted in a total of 2,274 arrests between June 1 and June 14."  

So, that is something to keep in mind. This is something that I think should be viewed as more sort of an ongoing endeavor rather than just something that sort of springs up in sort of a one-off situation and then kind of subsides. This is something and I have said this before, these raids I think are going to continue and they are going to continue with some degree of frequency.  These activities may not have the same level of mainstream publicity that we have seen in the past, most notably because the prior Immigration Chief seemed more interested, in my opinion, in using the press to provide certain deterrents to people who were thinking about committing Immigration offences and as a result was much more proactive in publicizing these raids.  

That being said I don't think that there is any decrease or decline in the frequency or the intensity with which the authorities feel that these raids need to be undertaken. So that is something that should be taken away from this.  Again, 2,200 Foreign and Thai suspects were arrested; that is not insignificant. Again this article is entitled Immigration Crackdown Nets 2,200 in Isaan. I urge those who are watching this video go ahead and check out that article because there is a lot more in there. They go into some of the breakdowns of what people were arrested for; what the charge is specifically, I am not going to get into that in this video.  

Another article which was published in the Nation, nationmultimedia.com. The article is titled: British Bar Owner in Hua Hin Overstayed Visa by 8 Years.  Prachuab Kiri Khan Immigration Officials have arrested a fifty-year-old British expat who overstayed his Visa by 2,917 days since his passport expired in June, 2011. Two issues with that, and we made another video on this channel specific to this. The expiration of passport poses problems of its own in an overstay context. I urge those interested in that, check out that specific video on this channel. But I wanted to bring that up because I just wanted to show that, again there have been a lot of smaller incidents and I was going to go ahead and print off a bunch of more of them, some of the reports that I went ahead and decided you know just for this video, I think the point is made which is Immigration, I said it before and I will say it again, they take the position that this is much more of a law enforcement matter now, not an administrative function the Immigration matters and in that sense they are more proactive about finding folks and basically arresting and deporting them.

In the case of some of these folks it really is in many ways rather sad to hear about somebody who has lived here eight years and clearly had made this place his home, being deported. I  suspect that is going to be a very disruptive aspect of this person's life but that being said, you need to remember to maintain your Visa status here in the Kingdom because failure to do so can result in an arrest like this and these deportations now are not just one off deportations as they were in the past. There were situations where we would see people deported 8 years ago and they would be back in the country a couple of weeks later. No, that is not the case anymore. Thailand takes the position that deportees basically committed a crime and they need to be punished for it, that punishment being a blacklisting for a statutorily prescribed period of time. I think moving forward you are going to see more of this and exactly how it plays out remains to be seen. 

But as I stated I think this should just be viewed as a phenomenon that is going to continue happening probably in the days and weeks and probably years into the future because the Immigration apparatus takes this issue specifically very seriously.