Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing "flexibility" in the context of Thai Work Permits. The reason I thought of making this video is I was reading a recent article from the Pattaya Mail, that is pattayamail.com, the article is titled: Pattaya Grapevine: Immigration Melody, under the subheading Work Permit Flexibility, quoting directly: "These days there seem to be fewer prosecutions for working without a permit. "Occasional voluntary work is usually exempt as long as it isn't "regular" and the old debates about whether you can paint your next door neighbour's front door as a favour seem to have died down." That may be true and I think that this writer, this journalist's observation on that is well founded. There do seem to be less arrests, prosecutions associated with lack of Work Permit but let's also be clear, there are far less foreigners in this country right now than there usually are and things have been pretty darn quiet especially during the lockdowns. I don't think you can attribute that to a policy change because I am here to tell you, at least here in Bangkok and I have had some clients down around the Eastern Economic Corridor areas that have run into some real problems with respect to work authorization. Do not presume that just because we have not seen a high volume of prosecutions associated with work permission that that means that there has been some major sea change in the thinking on this. Quite the contrary. We deal with the Immigration Inspection Unit on quite a regular basis, they are just as serious about their job as they always have been and they do find Work Permit violators daily. It's just a matter of the fact that it's not nearly in the same numbers and I don't think in some cases we are dealing with a lot of cases involving a lot of Farang, a lot of Western foreigners who are getting into Work Permit violations quite frankly because we haven't had a whole lot of them here for the past roughly two and a half years. 

So do I think that that is then indicative that things are more flexible? No, I have to disagree with that. I think if anything we just haven't had any volume because there just hasn't been anyone here, for lack of a better term. So, as people start to come back, I think this is going to continue to always be an issue. Work permission, Work Permit status, work authorization, it is a major issue to Thais, it is a major issue to Thai Policy makers because protection of the workforce in Thailand is something that they are very serious about. The reason for that is it is myriad, but a major reason for this look I mean Thailand is one country, they are one unified people and it's not like, when you think Americans, there is a lot of space, you can kind of go where you like and do what you want. No, Thailand has limited space and the people speak a language that quite frankly very few outside the country speak. If they don't protect their labour force where is their labour force going to go basically? So I don't think that the latest dearth of prosecutions on Work Permit violations should be viewed in any way as either A) a change in policy or B) as being indicative of there being less of those prosecutions especially as we start seeing more foreigners coming to Thailand in the relatively near future.