Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing Phuket Immigration specifically and this so called 'red card/yellow card' system being employed by the local Immigration office in Phuket. I thought of making this video after reading a recent article from the Phuket News that's thephuketnews.com, the article is titled: 'Red Card' system launched for 'bad foreigners' in Phuket. I urge those watching this video, go read that article in detail, a lot of information in there. I am going to quote an excerpt here. "Pol Maj Gen Praphansak Prasansuk, Commander of the Immigration Region 6 Office which oversees Immigration affairs in Phuket announced the new system at a press conference today March 1. Under the system, a foreigner will be designated a 'yellow card' for a first offense. The Foreigner will be issued a formal warning and the relevant Embassy will be notified Maj Gen Praphansak said." Quoting further: "After the foreigner completed the current stay and left the country, the foreigner will be denied permission to stay in Thailand for the next visit on the basis that the foreigner had conducted an unlawful act that “caused trouble and behaved (in a way) that is a threat to society." Quoting further: "If a foreigner is found guilty of a second offense during the same period of time, the foreigner will have the permit to stay in Thailand revoked and will be sent back to their home country, Maj Gen Praphansak said." Quoting further: "However, critical to the policy announced today Maj Gen Praphansak did not define exactly what level of or type of crime or 'unlawful act' would be considered for a first or second offense. 

So okay, we have got this 'red card/yellow card' system that they have come up with at local Thai Immigration and I have to admit it seems a little strange to me but nobody asked for my input so all we can do is analyze what the situation is as best we can based on the information that's out there. The question posed is where do they get Statutory Authority for this? Well it's pretty clear, I am not even going to cite it, you can go look it up for yourselves. 1979 the Immigration Act it is pretty darn clear. They have the authority with regard to issues pertaining to public health and safety and National Security to detain or arrest anyone they feel is a threat to any of those things and deport under certain circumstances. Now there is a lot of information in this article which gets into like this seems to be sort of focused on traffic citations which seems a little odd that Immigration Police are getting into the bailiwick of traffic citations, that doesn't seem to be within their purview, but again they have a great deal of authority regarding foreign nationals in Thailand if it is deemed that they are, and again I think this quote in the article shed some light on the thinking behind the authority for doing this, and I quote again: "Cause trouble and behaved in a way that is a threat to society". Well that is on par with public health and safety or "National Security" both of which and there is a whole list in the Act. I can't remember everything off top of my head, I always remember those two because whenever we deal with Thai Immigration and they are exercising negative discretion, they almost always throw that in as a matter of course. They may cite some other section specifically as well but that is always in there; public health and safety as well as National Security, that's just there and it looks like that is probably the underlying basis for this program under the Statute, that's how they are operating. 

So do I think it's the best idea? Not particularly. I don't really understand why this is being done this way. I kind of get it and I don't know the levels of crime they are dealing with down in Phuket. Maybe it is just a free for all on the roads down there and they wanted to go ahead and sort of tighten things up. I hesitate to believe that. I suspect it is just look it has been two, three years now where Immigration was not overly active on a day-to-day basis. That has come to an end; there has been an influx of foreign nationals into Thailand specifically in to Phuket. There are a lot of folks down in Phuket. I was there recently and it has got a lot of foreign nationals in it, there's no doubt about that. 

So again, someone may feel there's an exigent need in Phuket for these type of measures. It remains to be seen exactly how this interacts with greater Immigration. If you are in Phuket and you get a yellow card then you move to Bangkok, what does that mean? Is that on your record, or not? if so, I don't. I'll be honest with you, we're still trying to figure this thing out ourselves and honestly we don't deal with Phuket as often as we deal with Bangkok so it's not going to be something that has been on our radar quite as much as it definitely I imagine is folks down in Phuket. But the thing to take away from this video is yeah to me I don't see where they lack any authority to do this. Again I think the optics on it, especially when people look to come here on vacation and they see this kind of weird system for getting kicked out of the country and not being able to come back, I don't know if that looks great but long story short, yeah I definitely think Thai Immigration has the authority to promulgate this policy specifically within the jurisdiction of the Phuket Immigration Office.