Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing a new crackdown at Thai Immigration. I thought of making this video after reading a recent article from Khao Sod, that is khaosodenglish.com, the article is titled: Bangladeshi Businessmen smuggle illegal workers via Thailand. Quoting directly: "Immigration Bureau Officials held a press conference on January 18, 2024 to announce the expansion of the arrest of an illegal immigrant smuggling ring known as the "Asraf Gang" named after the Bangladeshi leader. Police Col Panupakaya Jitprayurathi, Deputy Commander of the Immigration Bureau's Criminal Investigation Division, said the case began in January and March 2023 when Immigration Department Officers arrested 41 Bangladesh immigrants who had illegally entered Thailand in Songkhla, Pattani and Narathiwat Provinces. Five cases were opened against them. Another 10 people were then arrested, including eight Thai nationals, one Bangladeshi national and one Pakistani national. The investigation team spent almost a year gathering evidence before they discovered that Mr Asraf was a Bangladeshi businessman who owned an import-export company. Behind the scenes, however, he was responsible for connecting all the immigrants with agents in Bangladesh and Cambodia to allow them to enter Thailand." 

If you go into this and I urge those who are watching this video, go check out that article in detail, as they get into how these people apparently were coming in over the Cambodian border and then being bussed down to the Malaysian border where they were then getting in there and trying to work there apparently; there seemed to be some implied notion that some were working here in Thailand. Again I think details are a little bit hazy as it is kind of early on in the overall investigation and the phase of the prosecution. So again we may have more details to discuss down the road.

Long story short, clearly this was a pretty major investment of time and resources on the part of Thai Immigration. I think that's indicative of what we have discussed in the past which is a paradigm shift from Immigration being an administrative function here in Thailand to being much more of a law enforcement function. Meanwhile something to keep in sort of the back of your head as an expat here in Thailand, is some of these things have sort of unforeseen implications, sort of knock-on effects if you will that can happen in ways that are not particularly, they are almost counterintuitive to what the results could be. So what I am talking about here is for example we have discussed this many times, we did a video on this at the time, there was a situation involving a number of Indian nationals going back years ago, I want to say at this point it was about 6 or 7 years ago, wherein officers here in Thailand where we being corrupted in order to on paper marry Indian nationals to on paper Thai nationals, who were unaware of the marriage and that is what eventually caused the scandal. 

Long story short, the upshot of that had implications in an Immigration context which we have discussed at length since that time most notably spot checks, various investigations done in an O Marriage Visa context. So the thing to take away from this video is yes clearly Thai Immigration is cracking down on those who are trafficking people and those who are coming into Thailand to work illegally or travel through Thailand without going through the proper due process i.e. Immigration checkpoints. They are clearly cracking down on that but the thing to take away from this video in a broader expat context is kind of have at the back of your mind that there may be unforeseen implications of this in the overall Immigration process that may affect everyone down the road.