Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing data collection on foreign nationals here in Thailand. I have done another video on this contemporaneously with this one but I thought it was worthwhile to note. I have talked about it more in the context that the new head of Immigration this seems to be a key piece of what he wants to go ahead and implement but I thought I would make this video because I think there is going to be practical on the ground implications for foreign nationals wishing to stay in Thailand moving forward in the form of Immigration Officers are probably going to be collecting a lot more data. Exactly what kind of data remains to be seen and it might not necessarily be they are collecting any different data but it might be that they are more organized in how they collate that data, how they process that data etc.

I started thinking about all of this from a recent article in the Thai Examiner, thaiexaminer.com. The Thai Examiner did a really thorough article on all of this. I urge those who are watching this to go ahead and check out that article. There is a lot more information than these excerpts I am quoting. New Immigration Bureau boss signals new orders so police can easily track down foreign suspects in Thailand. Quoting directly: "More fastidious collection of data and information about foreigners in Thailand will be required." Quoting directly: "He has already given instructions, (and he is the new head of immigration) he has already given instructions that Immigration Bureau personnel are to be more fastidious with the collection of data as to the location and whereabouts of foreigners particularly when inputting information for the 90-day reporting system and the TM6 form which all incoming foreigners are still required to fill in on arrival in Thailand." Quoting further: "Speaking on Saturday he said that his goal would be to make foreigners entering Thailand for the purpose of criminal activity think twice and to create an environment where they are fearful of doing so." 

So again, we have talked about this at length, I am not going to go too far into it but Thai Immigration is taking more of a law enforcement paradigm in the last five years or so as opposed to kind of an administrative paradigm so that is something to be aware of but I thought this was really interesting, they specifically point out 90-day reporting and TM 6 filings as a place where more data collection may be required, it may be part of the process of dealing with those things. 

So long story short, I thought it was worth drilling even deeper in this in this video to think about that because I don't know what that means exactly. We have seen when these policy changes come up they can have some pretty substantial unintended consequences most notably when we saw the TM30 being implemented the way it was a few years ago, that really caused a lot of upheaval within the expat community. I am not saying this will happen but it is interesting to posit whether or not this more fastidious data collection in the offing will have similar repercussions.