Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing ‘1,000 foreigners arrested for overstay in Thailand?’ I thought of making this video after reading a recent article from The Phuket News, that is thephuketnews.com, the article is titled: More than 1,000 foreigners in Phuket caught for Visa overstay. Quoting directly: "More than over 1,000 foreigners have been apprehended for overstaying their visas due to the collaborative efforts of the Phuket Immigration Office and 800 accommodation providers on the resort island report State News Agency NNT."

So, one thing to take away from this is, more and more collaboration from business owners, just local Thais who see foreign nationals in Thailand who are possibly in violation of Thai Immigration Law. And there is now digital applications and things out there that allow these small business owners to quickly interact with Thai Immigration Authorities so as to facilitate pretty rapid enforcement of Thai Immigration Law. That is a major sea change in terms of Immigration Law enforcement here in the Kingdom compared to years past. Quoting further: "From May 1 - 25, Immigration Police conducted raids on 1,550 targeted locations across Phuket, resulting in the arrest of 11 individuals who had overstayed their visas and an additional four people who had entered Thailand illegally."

So again, this is a situation where as we have discussed in other videos in the past, Thai Immigration's paradigm has changed fundamentally in the last let's call it five to seven years. Whereas in the past, Immigration kind of viewed itself more as an administrative function, more and more we are seeing Immigration viewing itself as much more of a law enforcement functionaire here in the Kingdom and as their digital technological capabilities have improved, Thai Immigration is increasingly able to ascertain when foreigners are on overstay and they are able to more easily communicate with the local communities. As a result of this, we are seeing an uptick in overall enforcement of Thai Immigration Law.