Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing, well we are discussion working illegally in Thailand, I am just going to jump right into it. I thought of making this video after reading a recent article from the Phuket Express that is thephuketexpress.com, the article is titled: Ukrainian arrested for illegally working on Pha Ngan Island. Quoting directly: "A Ukrainian man was arrested for allegedly illegally working for a motorbike rental operator on Pha Ngan Island. Surat Thani immigration officers told the Phuket Express today (May 6th) that they have arrested a 45-year-old Ukrainian man on Thursday (May 4th). Officers found that the Ukrainian man entered Thailand via Satun Immigration. Is Visa is valid until May 18th, 2023. He did not have a Work Permit. He initially denied the charges and said all rental motorbikes belong to the rental company but he was reportedly seen by Immigration Officers taking care of the motorbikes when customers returned the motorbikes they had rented."

Yeah, this is kind of one of those situations it looks to me like where someone is trying to kind of use semantics to, in their own mind more than anything, work around Thai Labour Law. I don't know what exactly went down here but every time I have seen illegal work authorization issues it is always, especially where there is no Work Permit involved whatsoever. Where there is a Work Permit involved oftentimes, quite honestly I have not dealt with in years a job description violation or anything like that. If you have got a Work Permit, you are pretty well set and going back and we have done videos on this, going back to the Emergency Decree in 2018, a lot of stuff under that Decree they just abolished; some really persnickety requirements, things like 'well you can only work on this one specific address' they kind of lightened up on that a little bit; job description, they weren't being again quite such sticklers when it came to that, so long as a Work Permit was issued and generally speaking the labour activity that could be surmised was well within, it didn't get into the violations of restricted occupations here in Thailand.

The point I am trying to make and the thing to take away from this video is trying to play these sort of games where well in this case 'oh no this Company owns these rentals. I don't have anything to do with that, I am just sort of hanging around.' That way, for lack of a better term, that way lies damnation because again as noted in this article, Thai Immigration doesn't arrest people willy-nilly. They look into it and they will investigate and believe me they are far and I know this from experience, they are far better at blending into the background than any foreigner that I have ever seen really gives them credit for, because 1) it's their country, 2) they look like everyone here as opposed to the foreigner who sticks out like a sore thumb and at the end of the day they are going to do at least some basic surveillance before they are going to arrest somebody on a Work Permit violation which is clearly what happened here. This person was trying to say that no and again I don't know all the facts, I'm not trying to make a judgment here but let's talk about a more hypothetical situation where a foreigner is working illegally and they say: "well I'm not really working illegally because XYZ", and the Immigration Official or the Labour Department Officer who is looking into it is going to say: "No, I have been investigating this. I can see what you have been doing, you have been working illegally", and it looks like that is what happened here, again allegedly. 

So the thing to take away from this video and the thing to understand is big takeaway, get a Work Permit if you are looking to come to Thailand and engage in any type of activity that could be construed as work and don't try to play the games of: "well, I am not being compensated" or essentially the zero-dollar so-called sort of defense which is "oh I am getting paid off shore and therefore nobody knows that I am working here." That is not how it works. Thai Immigration and the Employment Office are very assiduous in protecting the labour pool here in Thailand. They take their job seriously, not something to mess around with because if you are arrested for this it can lead to, well it could lead to prolonged detention possibly which isn't fun I'm here to tell you, and ultimately deportation and presumably blacklisting.