Transcript of the above video: 

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing a foreigner who overstayed his Visa here in Thailand and has been arrested, and it appears to have been a 3-year overstay.

I thought of making this video after reading a recent article from the Phuket News, that is thephuketnews.com, the article is titled: Swedish man arrested for almost 3 years of overstay. Quoting directly: "Officers from the Phuket branches of the Tourist Police Bureau and Immigration Bureau have arrested a Swedish national following complaints from neighbours regarding violent behaviour including threats and property damage." Quoting further: "The Swedish man was then escorted to the Phuket Immigration Office for an identity check, which revealed that his permission to stay had expired almost three years ago. Additionally, Police Officers discovered that he was wanted in connection with a case involving property damage from a traffic accident." So this is almost kind of one of these sort of 'foreigners behaving badly' type of videos but I thought of making it mostly to get into the whole issue of overstay.

Honestly folks, this is one of those things that snowballs, and metastasizes if you do not sort out your Visa status. And even if you go into a mild overstay, generally speaking if you are under 90 days of overstay, it's going to be a fine. Yeah you are going to get scrutinized when you come back through Immigration later on probably, but at the end of the day, you are probably not going to end up banned from Thailand or effectively banned from Thailand. This person here has been arrested in-country, is definitely going to end up with a five-year ban because they were arrested in-country and found on overstay. We have discussed that before.  If you are arrested in-country on an overstay, even a one day overstay, you end up with a five year ban regardless. Now there appears to be some other underlying possible criminal allegations and perhaps if adjudicated guilty regarding those matters, this person could actually see himself banned for an even longer period of time than five years, possibly a lifetime ban depending on the circumstances. 

So the reason for the video is just to reiterate yet again stay on top of your Visa. Sort of deal with it early and often, just get it sorted out even if you end up in a small overstay, sort it, leave, pay the fine, keep yourself as much in status as possible because again these things have a tendency to build up. And do you really want to be walking around Thailand having to duck and cover every time you see somebody in a uniform or something? No, it's not a pleasant experience I imagine. It's probably not a particularly pleasant way to live your life. So for that reason, it is definitely a good idea to go ahead and keep yourself in status to as much of a degree as you possibly can.