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Thailand Visa and Immigration News

Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we're going to be discussing a few updates with respect to immigration and visa news here in the Kingdom. 

One of the first things to take note off is something, it's kind of a theme we have been discussing on this channel for some years now, it's basically the so-called policy of "Good Guys In, Bad Guys Out" which is policy and it is a set of immigration enforcement practices that have been undertaken in Thailand since about 2014/2015. One of the major aspects of this is that just general crackdowns, sweeps for those who are on overstay are far more frequent. There was a significant number of deportations in the recent past but a recent development that came to my attention sort of anecdotally from a friend of mine who was traveling domestically here in the Kingdom is, he said that apparently now there are certain officers that are even  checking the visa status of individuals, foreign nationals traveling domestically, so inside Thailand, they're actually checking the visa stamps on those individual's passports in certain circumstances where they are traveling domestically. This would actually be a rather substantial overall change in enforcement policy because generally speaking, one doesn't really interact very much with immigration officers unless one is at Port of Entry when entering or exiting from the Kingdom but that being said it appears that this practice is, I won't say widely occurring right now, but I have had multiple people tell me that they have seen it in recent weeks, that they have seen immigration officers checking foreigners' passports on domestic flights. So that can be really problematic. There is another video on this channel with respect to blacklisting, immigration blacklisting, for those who are caught in country with overstay or in overstay status and this can be a real situation and again it can lead to blacklisting. I believe if one is caught in country in overstay it can lead to a five year blacklisting so. In the past, actually in my experience, it was one time possible to travel domestically as a foreigner in Thailand simply using one's Thai driver's license to get on the plane. I don't think this is so much in practice anymore, I think passports are generally the sort of "go to" document with respect to even domestic travel within the Kingdom, but that being said, it is rather interesting that anecdotally I have heard that multiple people have noticed that there are Immigration Officers checking passports in a domestic capacity at airports. So that's something of note, it's something of serious note and again as videos on this channel can convey, there have been multiple crackdowns searching for those who are on over stay or go work permit violations and as I have noted in those videos, I don't see that that is going to change anytime soon; if anything I think actually that enforcement measures are probably going to be more stringent over time. So that is basically is our take with respect to what is going on with major issues going on with immigration right at this minute.

Another thing to keep in mind is it came to my attention that the Penang Consulate, the Thai Consulate in Penang is closed. They put up an announcement on their website that they are closed from the beginning of April until further notice. It doesn't seem to be an indefinite thing. They apparently are changing the office location so they're taking the opportunity of the Thai holidays to go ahead and do that so that might be of interest to some folks who are watching this video.

But that being said, those are the major things that have come up in the recent weeks with respect to Thai visas and immigration. Stay tuned to this channel, we will try to put up some more information as things progress.