Transcript of the above video: 

As the title of this video suggests, are we, well what are we discussing? We are discussing a crackdown by Thai Immigration. I thought of making this video after reading a recent article from the Pattaya Mail, that's pattayamail.com, the article is titled: Thai Immigration issues stern warning after arrest of two Chinese nationals for passport stamp forgery. Quoting directly: "According to Police," - and I am making another video contemporaneously with this one where I get into kind of more the details of what went down in this forgery thing and also another video also contemporaneously with this one, where I am posing the question, "What the heck is going on with all these Chinese Nationals and what are they doing down here in Thailand?" That said, quoting directly on this particular issue and I urge those who are watching this video, go check out Pattaya Mail, pattayamail.com for further information on that because the video, excuse me, the article goes to a sort of different direction, getting directly into the issue of this forgery and stuff. But I thought this was an interesting comment, and it is worth noting. Quoting directly: "According to Pol. Lt. Gen. Panumas Boonyalak, Commissioner of the Immigration Police," - so this is the top guy; this is the guy that's running the top slot, - "and his deputies, the agency is cracking down on all foreign nationals committing crimes related to Immigration Laws..." Quoting further: "..including forgery of passports and official stamps -- a matter under the direct responsibility of the Immigration Bureau." I want to re-read this for a minute. "The agency is cracking down on all foreign nationals committing crimes related to Immigration Laws." 

I have talked about this in other videos. I talked about this for some time now and it may, I have brought it up so much that it has sort of gone into the background if you will, sort of faded into the woodwork if you will, of the narrative of Thai Immigration, but it is important to point out again. There was a time where Thai Immigration even viewed itself on a certain level as fundamentally an administrative apparatus. It had a law enforcement function but it's primary function was administrative. When I first got here, some 17 years ago, that was still kind of the attitude. Now shortly thereafter, it began to evolve toward what we now see which is much more of a "law enforcement" kind of attitude and yeah, I remember talking to an old-timer who, he passed away out here some years back, but he did decades in Thailand, especially up North and he worked with the hilltribes and places, people like that, he brought up the fact and this is going back to like 2010, '11, I remember him talking to me and saying there was a time you could go into a lot of these offices and whatever problem you had, you would sit down and you would sort of work it out. That time has kind of come and gone. They don't have a particularly accommodative attitude; it is much more like a law enforcement - black and white, yes or no kind of attitude - and it's only gotten to be more so like that, and that was 15 years ago that he was saying that, and that is the point of this video. 

The thing to take away from this video is yeah, Immigration has very much a law enforcement attitude now. It is not so much "we are just here to fill in paperwork and make sure folk's paperwork is correct regarding their status in Thailand. No, it is more, "we are law enforcement. If you are out of status, we are looking to detain you. If you are on some sort of substantial overstay or any overstay of any kind in-country, we are looking to deport and Blacklist you”, as I have discussed in other videos; one day of overstay if caught in Thailand can lead to 5 years of blacklisting. 

This is now the paradigm and I remember I made the videos at the time the Blacklist came about, and said, "hey this is not something to take lightly even though especially a lot of folks that were on massive overstays certainly did, didn't get themselves out before it came in and then we saw guys get arrested with 10,000 days of overstay and they are never coming back to Thailand. These paradigm shifts are substantial when they occur and when you see them and when they are explained, when they are articulated if you will without equivocation, it is important to take note of that and where they say and I quote again, "the agency is cracking down on all foreign nationals committing crimes related to Immigration Laws", it is important to take that under advisement. It is important to be aware of that because it is clear to me Immigration is serious about enforcing Immigration Laws and I don't think that that is going to change any time in the near future.