Transcript of the above video: 

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing how 2 minutes of overstay can lead to a possible ban of 5 years. I thought of making this video after reading a recent article from the Pattaya Mail, that is pattayamail.com, the article is titled: Latest British video glimpses Bangkok nightlife behind the curtain. I urge those who are watching this video, go check out that article in detail; I believe it's by Barry Kenyon down there at Pattaya Mail, tip of the hat to him. Good insight, good information in that article and we'll get to that here in a moment.

Very quickly, I go into in-depth analysis of matters that pertain to the sort of expat land here in Thailand, especially matters pertaining to Embassy visits, things like how overstay can impact you, how to avoid overstay, things like immigration detention as well as economics, geopolitics, local politics and how that all interacts with things like banking, tax policy and how that interacts with being an expat here in the Kingdom. If you are interested in that, our long-form content is available by emailing [email protected], and we can get you on the email list to be able to get that long form content; I'll be making another video this upcoming Sunday. That said, also while I'm sort of talking my game here, it's worth pointing out my better half and I set up a restaurant here in downtown Bangkok. It is called Pancake Palace, breakfast anytime as well as American Diner style food. If you are interested in that, there are links in the description below. You can come see us and we would love to see you. 

That said, quoting directly from a recent article, again Pattaya Mail, pattayamail.com: Latest British video glimpses Bangkok night life behind the curtain. Again, I am going to quote a small excerpt from this. The thrust of that article goes in a different direction, go check that out for more insight there. Quoting directly: "Zara accompanies a Consular Officer to the Immigration Detention Center though she isn't allowed inside with cameras. The officer repeats several times that one cashless Brit was arrested and deported with just a two-minutes Visa overstay. How typical is that? The footage showing the unloading of prisoners from a huge cage on the back of a truck is a timely warning of the consequences of arrest. The Embassy has no magic wand." I have discussed in a video made contemporaneously with this one, the powers if you will of the Embassy and there aren't many, in the event that you as a foreigner are arrested here in Thailand. It's not a good idea to engage in activity that could get you arrested and it's definitely not a good idea to think the Embassy can just wave a magic wand to get you out of all your problems; that is not how it works. 

Now that said, the reason for this video. How could put a 2-minute beats overstate lead to a five-year ban. Well in point of fact I have actually seen a scenario like this play out where somebody who was waiting for their flight, which was I believe in the afternoon of the next day, but they were going into like effectively a half-day overstay by leaving when they did, and they a lot of people do this, they were drinking the night before in anticipation of getting on their flight - I think it was a morning flight or something - but they were basically just having beers and they were planning on drinking their way all the way to, if you can't tell, this is not only a client, it was also a friend, who was drinking their way to getting on their plane, getting on their flight. Long story short, I was not present for this, but I became aware of it in the aftermath, which is always fun as a lawyer being friends with people who get in trouble. But basically, this person ended up in after midnight, their Visa Stamp was expired, they got into an altercation with somebody while they were drunk. The police became involved. They looked at their passport and they said Hey you are on overstay; in this case it was by like a couple of hours overstay. It was like 2.00am. 3.00am when they had the interaction with the police. The police detained this person. They actually detained them so long that they didn't make their flight. They had to rebook a new flight and then they were deported, and they were issued a 5-year ban. As we have discussed in other videos, there is a 5-year blacklisting associated with any level of overstay in Thailand of any duration. So again, it's not unheard of, it's not impossible that being over by 2 minutes into the next day, could result in a 5-year ban from Thailand.

Again, as we have discussed in other videos, if your overstay is less than 90 days and you voluntarily depart, what we would call voluntary departure, in the vernacular of United States Immigration Law - where you basically get to an Immigration checkpoint and you go out on your own, fair enough. As we have discussed in other videos, at one point Phuket Police were getting so zealous in finding people that they felt were undesirables for Thailand, they were actually ascertaining and apprehending suspects in the airport terminal if you will, before they got to Immigration in certain cases - I did the videos at the time - and because they had not hit the immigration checkpoint yet, they were being treated as if you were caught in Thailand. So if you are caught in Thailand on overstay of any duration, one minute, one second, two minutes, two days whatever, two years, if you are caught in Thailand, you will be deported and you will get an immediate 5-year ban; it will be associated with that. Now if you are 90 days or under and you voluntarily depart i.e. you check out through an immigration checkpoint, okay you might not get a blacklisting of any kind because if it's less than 90 days, there is no protocol to put a ban on you. Now as we have discussed in other videos, there is a kind of “Shadow Ban” for any kind of overstay. They don't like to see people overstaying in Thailand anymore, so when they do see an overstay on someone's file in a subsequent entry, that may cause problems for you. 

But that being said, and the thing to understand in this video is yeah, a two-minute overstay can lead to a five-year blacklisting as frankly for some as outrageous as that may sound, that is fact because that's the way that Immigration Law currently works here in the Kingdom Thailand.