Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing the Thai ED Visa as well as the Volunteer Visa. I have done a number of these videos in the past. These are two visa categories that again you need to be a little bit cautious when thinking about using one of these visas and you need to be highly cognizant of the fact that illegitimate organizations that assist in procuring these type of visas are out there. In the past, they put people in these categories to their detriment; it has resulted in real problems for folks who have gotten into Volunteer or ED visas in the past or they have seen themselves subject to deportation or investigation associated with their Visa status. I have been talking about this for years on this channel. There are a number of videos if you go back and look at ED Visas in our search function or you go back and look for Volunteer Visas you can see examples of that. 

I thought of making this video after reading a recent article from the Pattaya Mail, that is pattayamail.com, the article is titled: Thailand Elite cancels Visa change at the last minute. Quoting directly: "The elephant in the room is the future of all Thai Visa programs and not just Elite options." As we have discussed, Thailand Elite is sort of in a state of flux right now where they are going to be changing that overall program beginning in October and there is a September 15th deadline for getting into the program as it currently stands so we're kind of going through a little phase shift when it comes to Thailand Elite Visas specifically. Quoting further: "A Deputy National Police Chief stated recently that some annual, renewable visas are too cheap whilst criticizing corrupt practices in the issue of retirement, study and volunteer visas." Now I read that article, there were quotes from an article in the Bangkok Post; they were citing Police General Surachate "Big Joke" Hakparn who was saying some things about the Thai Retirement Visa. Now I don't think that they necessarily it was being implied there was corruption going on in the Retirement Visa category specifically. It was more about sort of gaming the system and the fact that the financial requirements were a little bit low and I've gone into great detail in prior videos discussing that and analyzing that topic down pretty much as far as you can analyze it. I got accused in many comments of beating a dead horse and things on that topic but whatever, these are major changes and I do feel like we need to parse out what exactly is going on. Meanwhile yeah it has been clear, we have seen not even from when Big Joke was in charge of Immigration and did crack down on things like ED Visas specifically, I mean he actually at the time we reported on it on this channel, he actually made on-site spot visits to various schools, would shut them down and would round up people in crackdowns and actually deport people en masse. If you go back you can read from our channel going into 2018 I believe, we were discussing that pretty in detail going into 2019. 

Meanwhile, setting aside the Education Visa, there has been a number of scandals associated with the Volunteer Visa where they were folks that were getting into Volunteer Visas that weren't really involved with any charitable organization, it was just being used as a kind of pretext and in those situations those folks actually ended up in a really sticky situation because they were having problems getting into other Visa categories or extending their status; it was a really problematic time for folks in the volunteer category. So this is not really new information that there's a lot of heightened scrutiny associated with the Volunteer Visa and the ED Visa. But when it is coming back up again, and we are seeing a lot of the Visa categories being how shall we say, reorganized most notably Thailand Elite, and then we have actually seen somebody who is in the running for being the National Police Chief now, who formerly was the Head of Immigration Police, when that person has even talked about amending Immigration Laws it's a good idea to stay up to date on this stuff because I could definitely see a scenario play out where we could see major changes to Thai Immigration Law and effectively see folks be unable to obtain things like the Education Visa and the Volunteer Visa.