Arkady

Lucky that the locals were able to drive the beast away before Nong Saeng received more serious injuries or was killed. In Thai villages the locals sneak up on dogs that they believe have either bitten their kids or killed their chickens, or just annoyed them by running after their motor bikes barking and feed them poisoned chicken, so they die in agony foaming at the mouth. My m-i-l has lost a couple of dogs this way and she never had any idea what her dogs were supposed to have done wrong or who killed them, even living in a small community of a couple of hundred people. I wouldn't be surprised if these pitbull will end up the same way. I don't agree with this horrible and illegal method of dealing with savage dogs but there is no effective legal redress against savage dogs or their owners.

The OP is absolutely right in saying that Thailand reacted to fears of mass immigration but it didn't happen recently and it was nothing to do with Western countries. It happened in the 50s when they pulled down the shutters on Chinese immigration out of fear that their open immigration policy would the new communist rulers of China to send a communist fifth column to Thailand. Up until then it was easy to get permanent residence in Thailand soon after arrival simply by demonstrating that you had a trade or profession through which you could earn a living and thousands of Chinese were migrating annually. They put a quota on permanent residence of 100 per nationality per year and increased the fees four fold. I don't think they are reacting to migration to Western countries or even take an interest in that. They don't need to because since the 50s it has become much harder to become a permanent resident. Even though the numbers of foreigners residing in the Kingdom has increased significantly in recent decades they don't feel threatened by that in the way that indigenous communities in Europe are feeling threatened by immigration because they know that the vast majority of foreign residents are on temporary visas which they can easily cancel or decline to renew, if they don't want them any more. On the other hand the the Prayut government decided it wanted to keep better checks on foreigners and sort out the good from the bad and have better ways to track down foreign criminals. The flip side of this that is rarely mentioned is that they have worked off the backlog of permanent residence and citizenship applications and streamlined the processes to be what they were like about 30 years ago. Under previous governments PR applicants were made to wait up to seven years and citizenship applicants were made to wait over 10 years and sometimes never heard anything back about their applications. Now PR can be obtained in less than a year and citizenship in 3 years.

It's odd that these long term overstayers with expired passports can survive without ever needing to use their passport for anything in Thailand. Obviously they never stay in hotels but might need a passport to go the bank or something and the clerk might notice the passport and visa are expired. Presumably, if they drive cars or motorbikes they do so without valid licences which risks getting caught without a licence at a roadblock and dragged off to the copshop to for ID and visa check.