Transcript of the above video: 

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing what I would call “Shadow Banning” as a result of the Immigration Blacklist. So what are we talking about here? 

First of all understand, there is a Blacklist in Thailand, and if you overstay your visa, you can be blacklisted, meaning that you will be deported or you will be put through process, what we would call Expedited Removal in an American Immigration vernacular. And then once expeditiously removed - for example at an Immigration checkpoint - if you are in 90 days overstay or more, you get a 90-day ban from returning to the country. And it goes up from there, different intervals. I believe a year is a year; 3 years get you five, and then from 5 gets you 10 and it kind of goes up from there. I actually can't remember the upper numbers but once you are in the Blacklist, it is not good. And that brings us to the issue of what I call Shadow Banning.

So folks will sit around and say "well, I was only on overstay for 10 days" - I was actually talking to a group of friends, talking about an acquaintance of ours who had been on a 10-day overstay. They left Thailand, they weren't over 90 days, so they weren't part of the explicit Blacklist, the explicit ban from overstay - you have to overstay by 90 days for there to be an explicit Blacklisting - but this person had been on a number of visa exemptions, which as we have discussed in other videos, you are not supposed to be living in Thailand on Visa Exemption status and Thai Immigration looks at your Immigration history, and if they ascertain or in their discretion believe that you are utilizing the Visa exemption status in order to effectively live in Thailand, then they will say, "Hey, we don't want you using this anymore", and you could have problems. The point here is he kind of had a double whammy; he had a 10-day overstay, he went to another country here in Southeast Asia and then flew back in and they said, "yeah, you've been gone a day, you had 10 days of overstay, you have had multiple exemptions, we are not letting you back in", okay? Now that is what I would call at least some nuance of what I would refer to as the Thai Immigration “Shadow Ban” Blacklist insofar as explicitly he is not blacklisted. He didn't overstay by 90 days or more, so he's not on the explicit Blacklist but in the totality of the circumstances of his travel to that point, Immigration basically said, yeah we're not going to let you back in. Case closed, and they denied him entry. Now that is different from deportation. They just deny entry and say be on your way. But that said, it can lead to a number of Immigration consequences as it did for that person and I will get into that in other videos when I talk about the consequences of deportation and denial of entry to Thailand, but it led to those other consequences which resulted in effectively this person having to go back to their home country which was not a good deal for anybody. 

But long story short, it all began with the fact that this person was only 10 days on overstay, “only” 10 days on overstay. All overstays are problematic. Do not read the Blacklist rules as if you have this 90-day grace period; that's not what it is. It's just there is no explicit Blacklist until you hit the 90-day mark, and then from that point on, there is an explicit Blacklist. If you think of it from the standpoint of public policy, past 90 days is effectively where the fine sort of “caps out” if you will, and from that point forward they basically say well, "okay, we are not going to take any more money off of you for the overstay but now you are being punished by not being able to return." Explicitly punished by not being able to return. Even an overstay under that 90 days though is not licensed to, "oh just overstay, and leave, you can come right back." No, that is not how Immigration treats it. As a practical matter, you are sort of "Shadow Banned" from Thailand and you may need to take more complex measures if you will, or more detailed measures in order to return to Thailand for example on a proper Non-immigrant Visa in order to regain admission and thereby be able to take up further lawful status here in the Kingdom of Thailand.