Transcript of the above video: 

As the title and the thumbnail of this video suggest, we are discussing another one of these kind of 'foreigners behaving badly’ in Thailand kind of scenarios here. I thought of making this video after reading a recent article from Khao Sod English that's khaosodenglish.com, the article is titled: From Australian suspect to Canadian tourist ends 7-year journey in Bangkok. A lot going on in this article and in this scenario. I'm going to make not just one video on this because there are multiple facets to this situation that I think can provide insight to viewers of this channel. Again, I thought of making this video after reading the article, but quoting directly: "On August 24, 2024, therefore, they revealed themselves to arrest him." So basically, this person travelled into Thailand ostensibly right now, on an Australian passport but then it looks like this person had dual nationality and he had used a Canadian passport in the past and had been arrested on that Canadian passport - we will get into that here in a minute - and then came back in and then was apprehended by Police, to just give some background. Again I urge those watching this video to go check out that article for more detail. Quoting further: "On August 24, 2024, therefore, they revealed themselves to arrest him. He confessed to being the same person wanted on a 2017 arrest warrant and stated he had never been arrested for this case before." Quoting further: "In 2017, Customs Officers at Suvarnabhumi Airport inspected (I'm going to redact the name) this person's luggage, then an Australian citizen..." So again, this is a dual nationality issue. I'm going to drill down into the whole dual nationality thing with regard to travel into Thailand in a separate video, but suffice it to say for this video we are talking about somebody who first came in on a Canadian passport, then had some kind of problem with the law, had a warrant issued against them. Subsequently appears left and then came back in on an Australian passport and it looks to me like was trying to navigate through the cracks as it were. Quoting further: "..then as an Australian citizen, as he was pushing his bag through the "nothing-to-declare" channel. They found more than 20 Apple iPhones, which he claimed he intended to resell for profit." Quoting further: "At that time, Officers charged him and handed him over to Suvarnabhumi Airport Police Station for prosecution. However, while the case was still in Court, he left the country. Seven years later, he returned to Thailand and was finally arrested." Quoting further: "This time, Officers informed him of his rights upon arrest. The suspect has contacted relatives or trusted individuals to notify them of his arrest at the first opportunity. The arresting officers then handed him over to investigators for further legal proceedings." 

So this is one of those situations if you find yourself being arrested at the Airport, it is probably a good idea to contact an Attorney as soon as possible so as to basically exercise what rights you may or may not have. 

But long story short here, what we are talking about is basically somebody who came in before was cited criminally and then returned using a different passport and has now been apprehended. Now how was this possible? Look in the past and I'm not going to drill down into this super deep in this video - stay tuned there's more coming on dual nationality - but suffice it to say, in the past yeah two different passports afforded people some “latitude” if you will with regard to travel. They may be able to kind of pull this kind of thing where they might have had a problem in a country before be it with immigration or even maybe law enforcement directly, and they turn around and use their other passport and utilize that travel document to come and go notwithstanding problems they had in the past.

Biometrics has effectively ended this as a practical matter. I've discussed this in other videos but biometrics, the fingerprints they take, facial recognition, even retinal scans under certain circumstances, are now often times just part and parcel of dealing with immigration. Now on a personal level, I could get into my personal feelings about this, I am not thrilled about it but that said we have to deal with practicalities, and pragmatism demands that we deal with the truth and we deal with the situation for what it is. So the thing to take away from this video one, is try not to get into problems with regard to Illegal imports here in Thailand and bringing things in to sell without declaring them, can result in somebody getting into those kind of problems. I am going to go into further detail on that in another video as well. The other thing is and something else to take away from this video, again with the advent of biometrics it is not prudent to presume that dual nationality is going to act as some sort of ‘cloaking device’ if you will, with regard to Immigration Authorities here in the Kingdom of Thailand.