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I haven't talked much about Education Visas recently. Probably the reason for that is there has been a lot of other things to discuss and frankly, I don't know, I've done a lot of discussion on the ED Visas in the past and really there is not a ton to add. That said, I thought of making this video after reading a recent comment, and I was told by the folks here in the office that sometimes monitor the comments on the channel that there were multiple comments possibly from this person. That said, quoting directly: "I've asked this question several times before." First of all, the proper place to ask questions if you want true legal advice, email us. That's the best way to deal with it. That said, quoting further: "Can you make a video on ED Visas studying Thai and the direction you see them going, rules about them. Is zoom studying allowed? Is there a time when you can or could get tested what you learned in Thai?" 

Yeah, I have talked about this at length. I think the ED Visas are the most vulnerable Visa. I think they are the most vulnerable one because of past experience or past circumstances involving crackdowns associated with the ED Visa, especially ED Visas that are ostensibly there for learning Thai. There have been circumstances in the past where the ED Visas have been sort of deemed to be something akin to a Visa mill. We saw this especially during the leadership of "Big Joke," that's Surachate "Big Joke" Hakparn, the former Head of Thai Immigration. He even did crackdowns at Immigration - or excuse me at "so-called schools" - and rounded up people and deported them who I think even had ED Visas. Again, there's a lot of documentation associated with maintaining those. So again Zoom study, I'm not entirely sure that that is considered within Regulatory Compliance associated with ED Visas. 

Meanwhile, at the end of the day, yeah, I haven't really updated my opinion on this particularly, that's why I haven't talked about it very much. Yeah, when there are crackdowns and things, ED Visas are the first place Thai Immigration looks especially ED Visas for studying Thai. I'm not saying all ED visas for studying Thai are illegitimate; I'm not saying studying Thai and getting an ED Visa is bad in and of itself. But in the past, it was determined that a lot of those were pretextual at best, and pretensive at worst and for that reason they said, "hey we're not going to go ahead and keep allowing this kind of chicanery." 

Again, there are legitimate places that do teach Thai and can sponsor people for ED Visas, but they are if you will, fewer and further between than they have been in the past, and I would say, you really need to be cautious when dealing with an Education Visa. One other reason for caution is that when later Immigration sees a prior ED Visa, we have seen this happen many times, it can jam up getting new Visas because then they start scrutinizing the old ED Visa and they start to think, "oh were you really using that or was that just a pretext to get a visa?" and that could cause you some problems. 

So again, at the end of the day my opinion hasn't really changed. It's still a viable option in certain ways, but it is something to be very cautious with here in the Kingdom of Thailand.