Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing overstay in Thailand. I thought of making this video after reading a recent article from the Pattaya News, that is thepattayanews.com, the article is titled: National overstay campaign continues in Thailand as American man arrested in Phuket for 8 days of overstay. Quoting directly: "Officers went to the house but they did not find him. They continued their investigation and they found him after a tip from a concerned citizen stating the Mr. Williams was in Rawai, Phuket. The Phang Nga immigration offices followed him to Phuket before arresting him." 

So let's be clear, this started in Phang Nga and then it ended in Phuket which that's not the same place. So they were going after someone for overstay and they put in a lot of resources on this. I have heard about this from Immigration Officers that we have a lot of contact with which is look these TM30s are being filed; this information is in the system and they are aware of when your overstay begins; there is a digital system on that now and I don't think it is outside the realm of possibility that in the future they're going to start taking steps to look for people who are on overstay not unlike Japan and Korea which we have heard about many, many times. I think I've even done videos on this channel talking about Thais going into overstay in Japan and Korea and being deported back here, not unheard of at all, in fact it is rather frequent when it comes to Japan and Korea. The Japanese Immigration apparatus is really amazing in their efficiency and Thailand is not, I wouldn't even say they're behind, they are just, some of this tech is new for Thailand but they have been dealing with this for a couple of years now and they haven't had much else to do but to play with some of these "toys" and we are really seeing the upshot of this which is I think we are going to see a lot of serious steps being taken to go after folks who are on over stay in Thailand. In the past, it was more a situation of inadvertently getting caught or dealing with it at the airport. These days not so much. Again, I have talked about this in the past, not so much recently, but Immigration no longer is taking the paradigm or is maintaining the paradigm that it is an administrative function but much more it seems to be taking the position that it is a law enforcement function and that is a major difference in terms of paradigm, just in terms of what Immigration itself thinks it is. 

So bear this in mind. If you are looking to come to Thailand more than anything if you can avoid it, avoid overstay at all costs because it can lead to some real problems. Most notably if arrested in Thailand while on overstay, even a minor overstay as noted  in the headline to that article I just read, this person, again I will just reread the headline: "National overstay campaign continues in Thailand as American man arrested in Phuket for 8 days of overstay". This is not the 865 days we were seeing back in 2018 when they first brought this in and we were seeing people getting arrested and things for it; this is over eight days of overstay and what's the upshot of this? As we have discussed, the blacklisting rules dictate, this person was caught in Thailand on overstay. That means a 5-year blacklisting.

So again the thing to keep in mind after watching this video is try as hard as you can to not overstay and do not presume that Immigration is going to have any issues finding a person who is on overstay because as discussed a moment ago, they now have more and more the tools on their side and the resources and the mindset to come after this from a law enforcement standpoint.