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Thai Immigration Officials Target Work Permit Violations

Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing further Immigration enforcement activities occurring here in the Kingdom.  

Recently it came to my attention that on top of the massive year of 2018, coming off of that year with respect to the roundup of thousands, if not tens of thousands, of illegal aliens here in the Kingdom and various detentions, deportations, arrests, black listings, 2019 is proving, at least to my mind, that Immigration is not going to be letting up in their efforts to strictly enforce the rules with respect to foreigner status here in the Kingdom. And especially it looks to me like they are turning more and more to issues of labor certification, work permit issuance or the lack thereof. 

In a recent article from the Nation, nationmultimedia.com, the article is titled:  “Wedding Smiles Vanish in Phuket as Photographers Hauled Away”. Quoting directly from that article, "Phuket Immigration Office Chief Colonel Kathathorn Kumthieg had his staff sniff around the Wat Kathu and Kata Noi beach and they found 7 photographers and assistants snapping away with no better license than a tourist visa. All were foreigners contracted in China to handle the assignments in Thailand."  Quoting further, "The seven foreigners arrested were taken to Karon and Kathu Police Stations and charged with working illegally." 

This is really important I think. In the past we've had Operation X-ray Outlaw Foreigner which has been a major drive to go ahead and look for basically illegal aliens of a more criminal bent. As I have explained in other videos on this channel, it is my belief that the Thai Immigration apparatus and the Officers associated therewith, are taking much more of a law enforcement stance with respect to visa violations whereas before I think it was more considered a regulatory or administrative issue.  Now it seems to me that they have rounded up and cleared out a large number of the bad actors that were specifically visa violators with respect to things like overstay and illegal entry those kind of things. Now I think work permit violations are going to increasingly come to the forefront with respect to Immigration's priorities in rounding up illegal foreigners and I think that this recent article, and I urge those who are watching this video to go read it for yourself, I think that this recent article is a substantial, I think I think it's evidence of a change in direction with respect to Immigration enforcement. I think whereas the last 18-24 months has primarily been concerned with illegal entrants and over stayers, where they rounded up a large number of those folks and deported them and presumably blacklisted a number of them, now the issue is becoming one of work permit violation. How this is going to play out. For me I think it remains to be seen but I think it's pretty safe to assume the 2019 is going to see some more of these stories where we see people that are being rounded up for either violations of their work permit or not having a work permit at all, as was the case in this article.