Overstay crackdown uses facial recognition tech

Immigration offices around the country have been cracking down on foreigners overstaying their stamps or visas. A ten-day campaign from December 1 to December 10 is aggressively seeking out tourists who have remained in the kingdom long past the date stamped in their passports. And some provinces are using some creepy Big Brother technology to do it.

In Surat Thani, the province that contains the tourism hotspot islands of Koh Samui, Koh Phangan, and Koh Tao, the immigration office is employing new technology. Officers have equipped Smart Patrol Cars that is using advanced facial recognition to check foreigners quickly. Immigration officers are patrolling in WiFi-enabled cars, usually a BMW, to crack down on foreigners who have overstayed.

According to The Phuket Express, the Surat Thani Immigration Office arrested a Chinese woman yesterday on overstay. The 31 year old woman was staying in a house in the Mueang Surat Thani district, in the Makham Tia sub-district. Unlike other recent overstay stories where foreigners were caught staying years past their stamp date, the woman had only overstayed her visa 19 days at the time of her arrest. She was taken into custody and brought to the local police station where she will be charged and will await deportation back to China.

On the other side of Thailand, in the northern province of Chiang Mai, police announced the arrest of five foreigners who had overstayed their visas. The arrests were made between December 2 and December 4 in the popular tourist province. Three Chinese nationals and three Burmese nationals were taken into custody.

One 42 year old Burmese woman had only overstayed by five days but was arrested for working during her stay in Thailand without a permit. The other Burmese person – a 50 year old man – had a stamp that expired 122 days before, about four months ago.

Two of the Chinese nationals, a 35 year old woman and a 40 year old man, had overstayed their visas by 87 days, nearly three months. The last person arrested in Chiang Mai was a 71 year old Chinese man who was 49 days over the limit of his passport stamp.