Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing the possibility of being arrested in overstay and possible deportation from Thailand. I thought of making this video after reading a recent article from the Thai Examiner, that is thaiexaminer.com, the article is titled: Overstaying Belgian man shot himself in the head in Phuket on Tuesday, third suicide in two weeks. Quoting directly: "Man who lived in a rented property in Phuket was facing a rest and deportation from Thailand after receiving a 90-day overstay notice from police." So yeah, understand Thai Immigration police have become much more proactive with regard to ascertaining if folks are on overstay and they have become much more proactive in terms of enforcement of the rules and regulations that prohibit overstay in Thailand. 

As I have discussed in prior videos before, you have to understand, in the past Thai Immigration took the position that Immigration matters were sort of an administrative concern but in the past roughly seven years or so roughly, we have seen that paradigm shift a lot where Thai Immigration takes the position much more now that it is an enforcement function, it's a law enforcement function and with the improvements in technology, Thai Immigration is more readily able to ascertain whether or not people are on overstay and they are more readily able to coordinate resources to find those people, arrest them and deport them. This is different. Thailand of 15 years ago, the Thailand I first came to, these capabilities were not yet in place. They did not have the ability to do this; Immigration was primarily running on a paper system. That has all changed, it is much more digitized and then on top of it they have many more law enforcement tools and there is a lot of information sharing now going on throughout the community where Thai Nationals are making Thai Immigration aware that there are foreign nationals in a given place that may be behaving badly or they are saying "hey this person has been here a long time. Just letting Immigration know somebody has been here 6 months continuously. Is this person maintaining their lawful Immigration status?" Thai Immigration is responding to that with alacrity and as a result we are seeing more folks being arrested; we are seeing more deportations associated with overstay here in the Kingdom of Thailand.