Transcript of the above video: 

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing the Immigration Bureau has been taking all sorts of things associated with foreign nationals trying to effectively live in Thailand on visa exempt status or trying to live in Thailand not really under appropriate Visa status in their mind quite seriously. Let's get into this. This is actually from the Thai Government's own website itself, thailand.prd.go.th, under the headline: Visa Runs Limited to 2 Under New Thailand Immigration Measures. Quoting directly: "Tightening the screening of 90-day Visa-exempt entries repeatedly used as Visa runs without returning to one's home country. Foreigners are capped at two visa runs; those with more Visa runs without valid reasons will be denied entry at both international airports and border checkpoints."

Yeah, as I have discussed in other videos, both made contemporaneously with this one and in the past, Thai Immigration is cracking down more heavily on those who are trying to utilize border runs in order to maintain visa exempt status on a long-term basis in Thailand. What are we talking about? People that have no Visa otherwise, just simply crossing out of Thailand crossing back and via a land, air or sea border and maintaining status that way, they're cracking down on this moving forward, so that's something to understand. 

Meanwhile though, the crux of this video, and the reason for the title: "Since early 2025, the Immigration Bureau has refused entry to about 2,900 foreigners with similar patterns." Again it comes down to the notion of what's your travel history. If they are looking at someone who has been in Thailand multiple times over the course of a year gaining exempt status: for example they get 60 days and then extend by 30, immediately leave, turn around and come right back in, that's going to start raising flags. You may be able to get away with that once or twice, but as time goes on, Immigration Bureau is going to look at that, and they are going to scrutinize your situation. They're going to say, "hey, what are you doing here? Are you trying to live here in tourist status, because that's not the purpose of that status." And it may end up in a situation where you get turned away from Thailand. As discussed in other videos, getting turned away is then its own set of problems, because from that point, you sometimes get red flagged and third countries won't take you because they see you as a deportee. So you may try to leave Thailand and go to Malaysia or something, Malaysia says, "hey we don't want you, you just got kicked out of Thailand.; what's going on here." I’m not saying that's a foregone conclusion either. 

That being said, and the thing to understand though is there is an ongoing crackdown and there is ongoing scrutiny from Thai Immigration. Also important to point out the cadence of Thai Immigration. Look high season, the start of it - I always look at it as Canadian Thanksgiving as sort of the beginning of the high season, late October - that's when you start to see Immigration, I'm not going to say that they relax or anything, but the overarching paradigm is, "hey the encouragement of tourism, it's high season, that's what they are here for."  That said, we're now sitting here in the middle, or the end now of February going into March, that tends to me the tail into the high season and that tends to be when Immigration again starts scrutinizing folks more, starts looking at people's travel history. A lot of folks that find Thailand for the first time, find it during high season and they start looking at wanting to live here. Immigration knows this and they change their protocols accordingly. 

So something to bear in mind is that yeah, Immigration is not only scrutinizing, but they are actually denying entry to a number of foreigners at any given time here in the Kingdom of Thailand.