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Mandatory COVID Tests for ALL Foreigners in Thailand?
Transcript of the above video:
As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing the possibility of mandatory COVID tests for foreign nationals here in the Kingdom of Thailand.
I am going to go ahead and put this on the screen. We will put this up. I actually received this from a number of different people. Clients as well as friends have sent me this so I am going to go ahead and put this one up on the screen. News: New Immigration Law Requires Foreigners to Provide COVID-19 Tests. Quoting directly: "According to this document published in The Royal Gazette, the Immigration Law for SECTION 12 subsection 4 and SECTION 44 subsection 2, has been changed to include the need for the foreigners to have a COVID-19 test done in order to stay in Thailand." This was published in the Royal Gazette on December 25th, 2020. The part that is underlined says it will become law 30 days later so that is 25th January, 2021; the week after next.
The need for a COVID test are being added to the following in the Immigration Act. Section 12: "Aliens falling into any of the following categories are excluded from entering the Kingdom, (and this is subsection 4 they are referring to), being of unsound mind, or having any of the diseases as prescribed in the Ministerial Regulations." So presumably they are going to add that into the Ministerial Regulations. Further, SECTION 44: "No alien shall take up residency in the Kingdom if subsection 2, it appears that such alien is unable to earn their own living because of physical infirmity or mental defect or having any diseases as prescribed in the Ministerial Regulations." I am going to quote some other things here and then I am going to get into analysis so I am going to keep going here.
First of all, just so folks are aware, what are the current restrictions with respect to section 44 subsection 2 which are those maladies which can have issues with respect to earning a living: leprosy, tuberculosis, lymphatic filariasis disease, drug abuse, syphilis. So everybody that has ever dealt with Work Permits here in Thailand knows about taking these medical exams associated with that. People also will note, I think even on most of those certificates, they even talk about Elephantiasis even. I think one of the diseases I just mentioned might actually be the technical name for Elephantiasis. Moving on, this is from The Pattaya News that is thepattayanews.com, and it is titled Reader Talk Back: Would you Support Mandatory COVID-19 Testing at One's Own Expense for Yearly Foreign Visa Renewal in Thailand? Quoting directly: "This comes as some media sources have highlighted a statement made in a recent Royal Gazette order that says the laws and requirements around foreigners have changed and added the requirement of having a COVID-19 test. However, there have been no official public announcements and many media sources and Embassies are seeking clarification. Some media sources say this only means "migrant workers" or those with Work Permits while others differ. The Center for COVID-19 Situation Administration, that is the CCSA, commented briefly on this stating that it was currently only policy for migrant workers but "could" become policy for all foreign workers by next month without mentioning other visas like family. However, many questions remain based on the vague wording of The Royal Gazette statement if it could apply to all foreigners and every Visa: marriage, retirement, education etc." Now a couple of things. This has been run past our legal team here especially the Head of our Immigration Division and they have noted that presently it does look to them based on the way that this is written, that it likely doesn't apply to foreigners already in Thailand. But note, so going back to the actual wording of this, I am going to go ahead and put this first thing back up on screen, " SECTION 12: Aliens falling into any of the following categories are excluded from entering the Kingdom". So under SECTION 12 that pertains to entry. We have already got provisions with respect to COVID-19 testing. You have got to deal with that as part of your "fit to fly" documentation as well as part of your COVID test before you can even get on a plane. We have done a number of videos on that on this channel. We urge folks to look that up. Long story short, they are already dealing with this for foreign entrants. Going back to SECTION 44 though, "no alien shall take up residency in the Kingdom if, subsection 2, it appears that such alien is unable to earn own living because of physical infirmity or mental defect or having any diseases as prescribed in the Ministerial Regulation." So let's start there. Residency is legally a different thing than Non-Immigrant status. We have gone through this at length on this channel. Residency is covered by one section of the Immigration Act of '79 whereas Non-immigrants are covered by another section. Just a couple of differences not quite totally on point with respect to this video but they are differences nonetheless. For example, Residents don't have to deal with 90-day reporting; they don't have to deal with TM30 address reporting, just as a for example; so they are different things at law. What I think we may be seeing is possibly Permanent Resident applicants may have to apply or have to obtain COVID testing clearance with respect to residency. What is interesting and the legal team here along with myself and we were researching all of this they did state and it was noted in one of the things that I just read from "unable to earn own living:. As we noted before, Work Permit holders have to get medical certification and for that reason, again one of the staff in here pointed out that, "look it is a little bit vague; it is possible it could move from being just residents to saying yeah we are going to go ahead and add that as a required test for obtaining Work Permit" and that is a possibility that seemed to be the sort of consensus when we were discussing all this that we may see this COVID testing being required in association with Work Permits moving forward.
That stated, this is all rather fluid. A lot of information came out on this in the past few days. I think Richard Barrow put up things on it. Thai Visa noted him and then did their own analysis. We have seen other things. A lot of this stuff, the stuff I have just put on the screen, I don't actually even know where that came from directly. That was forwarded to me by multiple parties and asked me about it and I have quoted directly from thaivisa.com in here where I was quoting the diseases currently on the list as well as The Pattaya News. This is out there and there is certainly a lot of analysis. I do not think this is time to panic in any way. I don't think folks that are currently in Non-immigrant status either B, O, whatever, need to worry at this moment. I think what we could see and I definitely think this may be a possibility, if they are going to change anything you are probably not going to need to worry about it until you have to go extend your status in the future. Again I think the folks that may be most at the front line with respect to this are possible Residence applicants, people looking for Thai PR, and I think there is an off chance based on my discussion with the team here and all of our reading and research with respect to the Act and with respect to the translations, and all this should be viewed strictly as informational until we see official word to clarify further. Again other folks who may be at the forefront of this policy change, I think there is an off chance we could see this having an impact on Work Permit holders at least in the rather near foreseeable future. At the same time, it could have an impact on everybody. They could just make this a broad-based requirement. That said, at present folks who are renewing things like an O Marriage visa, O Retirement Visas, O-A Retirement Visas, Education Visas, generally speaking they don't need any Health Certification as of the time of this video to speak of so that would be a major change, a sea change with respect to overall Immigration policy regarding Non-immigrants in the Kingdom. To be clear, again it is a fluid situation, we will keep you updated as the situation evolves.