Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing tourism to Thailand and whether tourists need to worry about Thai Immigration Police. What I am talking about when I say Thai Immigration Police, I mean just sort of being randomly picked up on the street or something by Thai Immigration Police.

I thought of making this video after reading a recent comment on our channel, quoting directly: "You mean they do it to one, they will do it to all down to the ordinary tourists, the tightening, but it seems like Thailand is cleaning up and polishing its image as a clean and safe destination." Well first of all I have got to say I don't think it was ever in question that Thailand was a clean and safe destination. Honestly, I don't feel any safer in Asia, really much of anywhere. South Korea, very similar to Thailand insofar as I never felt in any way unsafe. Japan very similar; Thailand very, very similar. I can understand maybe if you are a young lady or something and it is dark and you are on a street alone or something, I totally understand safety concerns there but as far as like "person crime" yeah Thailand that is not really an issue here. Yeah, I am not saying there aren't exceptional circumstances that happen but by and large and I mean 99.9 whatever decimal place you want to go to percent of the time, no you are not going to be worried about safety in Thailand in any meaningful sense. 

But sort of the sentiment of the comment that they tighten up Immigration because we have been talking a lot about how Thai Immigration is taking a much more proactive stance with regard to Immigration Law enforcement especially in the aftermath of high season and coming off of the Emergency Decree, yeah we are in a different world. We are not under the Emergency Decree where Immigration had the discretion to allow folks to stay the way that they could before. They don't have that anymore and quite honestly I think Thai Immigration Police view Law enforcement as their primary function and as we have discussed in prior videos, that is a bit of a paradigm shift from some 10 years ago where it was viewed in much more of an administrative capacity, it's not really viewed that way now. 

Long story short, and the purpose of the video, 'do tourists need to worry about Immigration?' I would say not much at all. Just do the basic, come into Thailand, get stamped in, make sure you pass through a border checkpoint correctly, you don't enter illegally, I am pretty sure most tourists are flying in so they are not really going to have a lot of choice with regard to that. If it is required depending on your TM30 situation, depending on where you are staying, if you are not staying in a hotel that does automatic TM30 filing for you, then yeah you may have to proactively go deal with your own TM30. Other than that, I mean no, I don't think Tourists really need to worry about Thai Immigration Police sweeping them up, if they are real tourists. If they are ostensible tourists coming to Thailand for the purpose of working or trying to fall into overstay and just live here sort of under the radar, no that's not a good idea. Those folks need to kind of worry about that. Again that is sort of akin to what is called an intending immigrant without proper documentation to the United States. That same thinking of being kicked out or not allowed into the United States because for example US Customs and Border Protection says we don't think you are a real tourist; we think you intend to live here and work here; we are not going to let you enter on a Tourism Visa. If Thai Immigration either at a Border Checkpoint or within the Kingdom makes that determination, then yeah it's possible that someone who is determined to be in that set of circumstances it's possible that that individual or individuals could be deemed to be deportable or could be deemed to be not able to enter Thailand and those people could be sent back either to their home country or from whence they came.