Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing the new Immigration Chief here in Thailand. We are seeing this happening, in the past few weeks a new Head of the Immigration Bureau has been appointed and some interesting things going on with this. 

A recent article I was reading, and it is very detailed, there is a lot of information in there. It is on the Thai Examiner website, thaiexaminer.com. The article is titled: New Immigration Bureau Boss Signals New Orders so Police can easily Track down Foreign Suspects in Thailand. There is a lot going on in here but this excerpt I thought was really interesting. Quoting directly: "The newly installed Immigration Police Chief wants to create a climate of fear against foreign criminals who are waiting for the opportunity to use Thailand as a base for their operations once inward tourism resumes into the country on a wider scale when the COVID-19 crisis ends. He says better screening and database technology has already helped to make Thailand less of a paradise for these types who use the country for drug trafficking and a range of online scams that not only damage the country's reputation but cause harm to Thai people." To be clear, this is me talking here, on a very fundamental level you know the Thai in me, as a Thai I am very happy. Frankly I don't really want Thailand to become a haven for foreign criminals, but for every action there is sometimes an equal and opposite reaction and sometimes there are unforeseen consequences arising from policies. I am going to get into that in a minute; some analysis on that but I want to quote further, again from Thai Examiner, thaiexaminer.com quoting further: "Thailand's new Immigration Bureau boss wants a tighter ship when it comes to tracking foreign residents in the Kingdom and tourists." Quoting further: "Police Lieutenant General Pakpoomphipat Sajjapan has also revealed that under new entry vetting procedures, Thailand's Immigration Police can now halt any passenger boarding a plane for Thailand if the person is deemed a threat to the security and well-being of the country. The new police boss wants to see an improvement in security databases and intelligence on foreigners living in Thailand going forward." There is a lot going on there.

This is just something I have watched especially over the past roughly 6, 7 years, Thailand's Immigration apparatus has very much shifted its policy paradigm, its overall paradigm from one of being sort of an administrative apparatus to being very much a law enforcement apparatus or one component of a larger law enforcement apparatus. Again collecting data, forestalling foreign criminals from coming into Thailand and all that comes with that. That is a real shift and I hesitate to completely compare this incoming Immigration Chief to "Big Joke" because as we recall "Big Joke" made major changes within the paradigm of Immigration. We saw a lot of really heavy restrictions come down under his watch. Retirees saw a lot of changes especially with respect to documentation pertaining to financial criteria as well as we saw crackdowns where they would round up a lot of illegal folks, a lot of illegal entrants, people on overstay. The Blacklist came online under him although as I have noted in other videos, that appeared to be coming regardless of the Government as well as in my opinion whoever was in charge of Immigration. I think that policy change was on the books long before any of these folks that we are dealing with currently now were around. 

But what I do find interesting is it does appear that the new Immigration Chief is pretty serious about the law enforcement side of this and from that perspective I see a lot of similarities at least between the beginning of Surachate "Big Joke" Hakparn, the initial phases of him becoming the Immigration Police Chief, I see some similarities between him and this Chief that has just recently taken up the position.