Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing whether or not Thai Immigration encourages use of Visa professionals and Visa professionals we are talking law firms like us, Visa agents so-called although and we have done other videos on this, Visa Agents it can be a mixed bag when you deal with Visa Agents here in Thailand. 

As we have discussed, in an American Immigration context Visa agents are illegal. 8 CFR 292.1 is very clear but with respect to Thailand we don't have that same set of jurisprudence here. In certain circumstances, "Visa Agents" may be highly help so it is kind of a mixed bag although we have seen problems and we have had to step in and sort out problems on behalf of clients because things happen with respect to a Visa Agent. 

The question is I had some correspondence from someone who had a bad experience here recently at Thai Immigration and basically his takeaway was he kind of thought that Immigration would just prefer that there be sort of an intercessor, there be an intermediary between the actual foreign national and Immigration in the form of a Visa professional, an agent, lawyer whatever. I don't think that's necessarily the case. I will say and we have dealt with Immigration for a number of years, we have had them say in fact that they do kind of prefer dealing with Law firms, folks that deal with Immigration a lot especially in a Business Visa context because the documentation associated with that is rather substantial and folks that are used to dealing with it that have long experience dealing with it, are often times in the best position to make those cases move a little bit more smoothly whereas often times you will have a frustrated foreign national trying to do it themselves and it is a lot of paperwork, long story short, in a Business Visa context. 

Meanwhile, in other types of Non-Immigrant Visa contexts it may not be. Retirement Visas for example, folks may decide to do it themselves, folks may not. I have always likened Immigration somewhat to taxes. You can decide to do your own taxes if you want but yeah there are implications to that and there are upsides to it. There are people that have no problem doing their own taxes but there are people that say and often times it is for convenience or peace of mind who say "look, I would rather just hand that off to somebody who deals with that every single day and let them just handle it". 

So Immigration can be like that. Now do they have the attitude that they sort of encourage professionals? I don't really think so. In fact I think most time they are probably on a level of indifference about it but I will say in a Business Visa context I have definitely seen them over the years kind of prefer to deal with somebody that knows what they are doing on a very detailed level with respect to Business Visas.