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Thai Immigration Refusing Entry to "Fake Tourists"?

Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests we are discussing recent developments from Thai Immigration wherein it appears that they are more stringently analyzing if you will, folks that are entering the Kingdom of Thailand. 

We have seen similar stories to this but a recent one that came from the Thaiger and that is the thaiger.com. The article is titled: 13 Bangkok Passengers Refused Entry to Thailand by Immigration Police.  Quoting directly: "Region 2 Immigration Police at Suvarnabhumi Airport report that they denied entry to foreigners who were not able to provide proof of funds to support their traveling while visiting Thailand. The Immigration officials claim the tourists were not visiting Thailand for tourism".

Quoting further: "They were using the provisions in article 12 sections 2 and 9 to refuse entry to the passengers.” Now that is article 12 of the Immigration Act. Let's go ahead and look at article 12 sections 2 and 9.  Let's go ahead and see what that says. This is an English language translation of the Thai text of the Thai Immigration Act.  The Thai Law, the Thai language is going to be compelling so this should simply be viewed as nuanced perspective. It is simply providing some perspective on the law. It is not the controlling language of the law itself but I think it can provide some insight for foreigners who do not speak Thai. So section 12: "Aliens falling into any of the following categories are excluded from entering the Kingdom." So that is section 12.  That is sort of the header. Subsection 2:  "Having no appropriate means of living on entering the Kingdom." So no way to live once you enter the Kingdom. Furthermore section 9: "Having no money or bond as prescribed by The Minister's Publication under section 14." 

So the long and the short of this is there is legal authority for denial of entry if in the Immigration Officers adjudication, if in their scrutiny of the entrant, the entrant cannot provide proof of funds to be able to support themselves in the Kingdom, they cannot provide some sort of proof that they have tourist intent and intend to leave. So a major part of this is folks that are entering the Kingdom and I think a major issue is they are presuming that these folks may possibly be coming in to work "under the table" for lack of a better term. They are sort of looking to work, sort of circumvent the laws with respect to work authorization in the Kingdom and they want to go ahead and try to discourage that type of behavior. So while it may seem a little bit heavy-handed at first you have got to understand there is legal authority for this. Also it should be noted that there does seem to be some genuine policy reasons behind not admitting tourists that can't prove an ability to vacation here in the Kingdom. 

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