Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing Air Border Runs. I have had lots of correspondence over the Thai New Year and they are basically asking me about Air Border Runs as opposed to sort of Land Border Runs. What's going on here is people are curious, they all want to stay in Thailand as long as possible it seems using what is called the Visa Exemption, the Thai Visa Exemption stamp. So this is an exemption from a standard Thai Visa wherein the person arriving in the country is granted lawful status notwithstanding the fact they don't have an actual Visa. So there are 60 countries whose passports will allow for a Visa exemption, I believe approximately 60 countries. Now prior to this month, it was a 45-day stamp on arrival, presently to the best of my understanding, it reverted back to a 30 day stamp so you get 30 days-on-arrival in Thailand from here on in Visa exempt status. So as a Visa exemption, you get 30 days and then it is possible to go ahead and extend by another 30 days here in country.

Now as we have discussed in other videos going all the way back to the promulgation of the Decree itself, there was a decree which stipulated there were only two Border Runs allowed per year on these types of passports that would be granted sort of unfettered access upon return to Thailand. Now I have had a lot of people ask me "okay, I understand Land Border Runs, but what about Air Border Runs? I am going to go back and do a deep dive into this but it is my understanding the original Decree never made a distinction between Land and Air and Sea. It was just you had two border runs a year, two, you could count on if you will, two times you can travel into Thailand in a given calendar year and be granted a Visa Exemption and presently that means 30 days of status in Thailand upon arrival. So basically you could essentially bank on being able to come and go twice. Now as has been discussed out there, I think people are creating a distinction where none legally exist although practically, yeah I can see that there may be some more laxity if you will on the rule at an Air Border checkpoint, so coming in through an airport, through an Immigration checkpoint. Basically Immigration may be more lax, they may allow more of that. This kind of makes sense if you view it in the context of the way like ASEAN works where there is a lot of movement of labour, there is a lot of movement of business travellers especially down here in ASEAN. For those who are unaware, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations so somebody comes back and forth frequently from Singapore yeah they are being granted a high number of exemption stamps so they may come up here every weekend or every other weekend or every quarter if you will for a weekend and they are granted a Visa Exemption on arrival. Then people sort of say to me "well you tell people you can only get two a year." Well that's what the rules say, the Decree says that that is sort of what you can count on. Now Immigration has discretion in their own right to grant people access to the Kingdom as and when necessary, or as and when they deem it appropriate I should say might be more correct terminology to use.

The point I am trying to make with this video is while there does seem to be more laxity regarding so-called Air Border Runs and I will do a deeper dive on this and maybe I will have to do a video correcting myself, but at the end of the day I haven't seen any distinction regarding so-called Border Runs where you are running over a Land Border versus the air. I've never seen a distinction on policy with respect to that. Now as a practical matter again, Thai Immigration can see what you are doing if you come in every two weeks and stay two days they are not really bothered with that. Something that does bother them is what in using phraseology by analogy what we would call "intending immigrants without proper documentation" in the United States so this is people using Tourist Visas to effectively live in the US, you get denied from being able to come into the US eventually if you are doing that. Thai Immigration will do something similar, I have seen it. Basically they say look you are using Tourist Visas to live here, we don't want to see that, we want to see you being an actual tourist.