Transcript of the above video: 

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing increased scrutiny by Thai Immigration during "low season". Now I put "low season" in quotes for a couple of reasons here. First off, let's describe what low season is. During the months of October, November, December, January, generally February, that's considered what's called high season here in Thailand. That means there are a number of tourists here in Thailand, that tourism just generally there's just a lot more numbers during that time. Now in the past, the summer, from about May really until again the forthcoming roughly October, although we do see a little bit of a spike in terms of European Immigration during August but one thing it is generally speaking a pretty long period of so-called low season where we see less numbers of tourists.

That said, here recently as we have discussed in another video, certain folks especially down in Phuket are starting to call the low season the "green season” because many people remaining in Thailand for all the green products and I'll let sort of your imagination roam with that but staying in Thailand due to policy changes regarding green products, I'll just leave it at that. So on the one hand, you could say that the current season is what we would otherwise call low season, we are seeing a number of people still wanting to travel to Thailand during this point in time or wanting to remain in Thailand during the so-called low season. 

Now something to bear in mind with respect to Thai Immigration, they oftentimes use low season to heighten or be more proactive if you will in terms of enforcement of Immigration Law. And why is this? One, low season itself allows relevant authorities to basically separate if you will the true tourists from people who are trying to live here. And generally speaking like with many other Immigration Offices around the world, the different states, they don't really like you living in a country as an ostensible tourist. Generally speaking these jurisdictions, including the US, Thailand, whatever, like to see people living in the country on a Visa that is associated with living somewhere. In Thailand that could be a Non-immigrant Visa, it could be an Immigrant Visa like Permanent Residence, even things like the Elite Visa, the new visas that we are now seeing come around - the Long Term Resident Visa (LTR) the so-called Destination Thailand Visa, all of these are options out there and as we have discussed, some of them have been made out of whole cloth and quite honestly a lot of the attributes that many of the people who are sort of flogging these kind of visas are attributing to them, aren't exactly in line with Immigration Law as it sits; I've done the videos on that in the past. 

But the thing to keep in mind and the thing to take away from this video, Immigration oftentimes here in Thailand will use low season, one, they don't have as much burden on their resources in terms of doing intake of tourists because the season is lower so they can redeploy resources to things like inspections, to things like enforcement in the low season. The other thing is low season itself allows Immigration Officers to decipher folks who are truly tourists during the high season and people who are trying to live here. And for those that are trying to live here, generally speaking it is a good idea to get yourself into some kind of Non-immigrant Visa status here in the Kingdom of Thailand.