Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing possible stricter Labour Law enforcement as well as Immigration Law enforcement here in Thailand. I thought of making this video after reading a recent article from the Bangkok Post, that is bangkokpost.com, the article is titled: 'Gangs of foreigners' accused of stealing jobs from locals in Phuket. Now I urge those who are watching this video, read that article in detail. There's a lot of insight in many different facets of this whole thing. I am going to quote a small excerpt here but there is more going on in there, so I urge folks who are watching this, go read that article at length. Quoting directly: "The Hospitality Sector in Phuket is urging the Government to solve the issue of foreign Mafia on the resort island. It is concerned the group is now exploiting laws to run their own businesses while also taking up the jobs traditionally reserved for locals." Quoting further: "Tourism and Sports Minister Phiphat Ratchakitprakarn should deal with these concerns." Quoting further: "Mr. Phiphat said Authorities will look into the matter. Quote: 'I am certain most Thais will not tolerate it if foreigners are trying to steal their jobs. Authorities from various agencies will look into the matter as the Prime Minister has also ordered the Royal Thai Police to crack down on it' said Mr. Phiphat." 

So when you see this stuff in the press and I am not, I have had my own criticisms if you will, the Press especially during the Emergency Decree, dealing with all the COVID and everything. Believe me I have got my critique with the Press in certain ways. I am not saying they are all bad, I have my issues, sometimes. These Immigration things when you see this kind of percolate up to this level where you are seeing a Minister in the Thai Government who is commenting on this and then this is also being quoted basically in the English language paper of record for Bangkok here, this is something to keep in the back of your mind as a foreigner here in Thailand. 

Again we have talked about it lo this past quarter, or what has transpired within this first quarter of 2023, that again and I said this when we saw the Emergency Decree end last year, which is look the discretion on the part of Thai Immigration or even Labour Officers here in Thailand has been pulled away with respect to being able to kind of be a softer touch on issues like "well do you meet the requirements for an extension?" Under the Emergency Decree they had more discretion because the concern was "hey it is hard to travel, there is an exigent need for that discretion." That's not there now. We are back to status quo ante; we are back to where we were first quarter in 2020 and Thai Immigration in many ways is arguably back there. You can also make strong arguments that in fact they have now had all this extra time to sort of think about policy while they haven't had the plethora of foreigners here that they usually have, they have had time to think about enforcement; I suspect they have been training and all of these things kind of lead to a confluence of events where you are going to see stricter enforcement of Immigration Law and Labour Law here in Thailand. Couple this with the fact we have seen more movement from characters like "Big Joke" here in Thailand who clearly have their own sense of how Immigration should operate and how law enforcement regarding Immigration should operate. All of this is kind of coming together in a situation where yeah, I can definitely see a situation where we are going to see increased scrutiny of applications for work authorization or work authorization extension, applications for things like Business Visa or Business Visa Extension. These are all going to become, or I should say maybe they already have, we are probably going to see this being a much less lax regime than what we saw during the sort of interruption that was COVID, I just don't see it staying that way going forward. If anything I see things getting tougher in the realm of Business Immigration and work authorization here in the Kingdom of Thailand.