Transcript of the above video: 

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing general Immigration here although I initially thought of titling this video Thai Immigration specifically as we will get to. The article we are going to cite pertains to Thai Immigration specifically. That said, I've been doing US Immigration work for nearly two decades now and I have dealt with a lot of dual nationality issues. Some of the same analysis that applies in Thailand can also apply not only in a US Immigration context but across the board. 

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 in 7-year journey in Bangkok. Quoting directly: "Immigration Police investigators, through International cooperation, arrested Mr. X (I'm going to redact the name) who was once an Australian suspect and fled Thailand 7 years ago, when he reappeared in Bangkok as a Canadian tourist." So what was going on here, this person apparently was arrested and cited in a prior iteration of himself if you will insofar as in the past was using an Australian passport - apparently had dual nationality - and somehow managed to evade prosecution here in Thailand some years ago, returned to Thailand using a different in this case Canadian passport, and then attempted to go on about their business and they were discovered basically. 

As I discussed in another video where we talked about that article more directly, and I urge those who are watching this video, go check out both that video as well as the underlying article for more insight into what's going on here, but long story short I think what's really worth pointing out here is the notion of dual nationality being some sort of "cloaking device" that allows someone to sort of walk between the raindrops if you will insofar as going from one jurisdiction to another and sort of flipping passports so as to sort of avoid detection by Thai Immigration or any Immigration apparatus for that matter. Those days are fast coming to a close and what is causing the twilight of that phenomenon? Well quite honestly, biometrics. As we have discussed in other videos, they continue to take fingerprints in the context of Immigration in virtually every jurisdiction now. Most passports, in fact I think virtually all of them that are now being issued, have biometric digital insignia within the passport itself. Also we are talking about facial recognition now where facial recognition allows for identification of people notwithstanding the fact they may be using different travel documents when travelling to different jurisdictions. Again my personal feelings aside, I don't love all of this stuff, I think it's quite Orwellian but for purposes of this video, we're talking about the practical implications for travellers and for folks who have dual nationality, and the thing to understand, look, there are a lot of dual nationals out there and having dual nationality in and of itself isn't in my opinion that big of a deal but if you are trying to use your dual nationality for some sort of nefarious purposes or to evade law enforcement or to avoid warrants and things, you're probably going to find yourself in quite a pickle especially as we are seeing the technology associated with Immigration improved by leaps and bounds, I mean orders of magnitude. When I look back on the roughly 15-17 years I have been dealing with Thai Immigration, I've been dealing with US Immigration, both, I mean the level that they're at now compared to what they could do 15 years ago is staggering. I mean just in terms of the information they can collate and cross reference, there was a time they just simply did not have that technology. We discussed that specifically in articles where we were discussing Thai Immigration in Phuket's efforts to go after people on overstay and they were doing knocks on people's doors at night the moment after basically the Immigration Offices closed for that day, in order to inform somebody "hey you're on overstay and you have got to go ahead and deal with that." Those capabilities were unheard of a decade and a half ago.

Well they have those capabilities now and dual nationality moving forward, while there are reasons to have dual nationality and if by dint of your birth or whatever you just happen to have it, I wouldn't worry too much about it, that's not the point of this video. Dual nationality in and of itself is not something to be overly concerned about. That said, if you're trying to use it again as some sort of "cloaking device" or to try to sort of be a little too smart by half and evade authorities and things, you're going to find yourself in more problems than you really want.