Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing "Big Joke" who has not been on the lips of this particular broadcaster, if you want to call me that, this particular YouTuber, in a long time. I think we may have done a video maybe a year ago something came up and we were talking about him. 

For those who do not recall, "Big Joke" gained some notoriety a few years back when he became the head of the Immigration Division and made a lot of changes including a lot of crackdowns of a lot of folks who were on overstay here in Thailand here in Thailand; a lot of people here illegally. We did a number of videos on that and there were a number of crackdown some years back but he was essentially shunted out of Immigration and in fact out of the Police Department. However, a recent article from the Bangkok Post print edition, this is from print edition Wednesday, March 10th 2021, again Bangkok Post print edition. The article is titled: PM Denies Big Joke will get Active Post. Quoting directly: "Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha has denied that Police Lieutenant General Surachate Hakparn, who was removed as Immigration Bureau Commissioner in 2019 is being reinstated to an active post at the Royal Thai Police. Instead a source said his transfer back to the RTP might be to an inactive position." So again, I urge you to check out this article, again this is from the print edition, I suspected it is on Bangkok Post online, no problem there. PM Denies Big Joke will get Active Post.  

The thrust of this article is what I thought was interesting. He has been in a civilian role for a number of months, going on 2 years now and now he is going back into the Police albeit perhaps, at least from what the Prime Minister seems to be implying, in an inactive position but Police nonetheless. So kind of begs the question "are we going to see a return of "Big Joke" to Immigration Police?" Or is he just going to be in the police division? How is this going to proceed? I know a number of foreigners, again notoriety is the best word for it. He gained a lot of notoriety in the foreign expat community and immigrants alike everybody, anybody that had to deal with a Visa. We all were very aware of the policy changes that "Big Joke" made. I mean he really, really shook things up in Immigration. Since then, a lot of policies have remained but certain things have not. Overall, Immigration has been more placid albeit it can still be difficult and vexing to deal with but overall we haven't seen the kind of radical policy shifts that we saw under "Big Joke".

It will be interesting to see if anything comes of this as a practical matter for folks who are on Visa status here in Thailand. If something does come up and we become aware of it, we will certainly try to update folks as soon as possible.