Transcript of the above video: 

An often-posed question to me as it comes from the foreign community here in Thailand, especially expats and things, over the years I've had people that kind of shrug off Work Permit stuff. People just think, "aah, I'm getting away with it", whatever and in the past I could kind of understand the lackadaisical attitude about such things. Now frankly, especially in light of all these new digital technologies that are coming online that relevant authorities are using, it's pretty foolhardy to disregard things associated with Work Permits. But a question that gets posed by a lot of clients when we are talking about Work Permits is how is it actually discovered? Like when does the rubber hit the road on being discovered for not having a Work Permit? 

One way is just random checks and raids, and by the way, Immigration is doing that more as well as the Labour Department. More folks and law enforcement, are looking at those working in Thailand illegally and they are being more proactive than in the past; I've done a lot of videos to that effect with regard to just random raids. 

But there is another primary way that most people get sort of outed for working without a Work Permit and I thought of this whole issue after reading a recent article from the Bangkok Post, bangkokpost.com, the article is titled: Bangkok Police raid unlicensed International School. I've done a video contemporaneously with this one where we get into the details of what happened there and the violations that went on, but this excerpt was telling and as much as a lay person might just read over that and just kind of disregard it, this excerpt is actually pretty telling. Quoting directly: “The raid followed a tip off that an International School in the Prawet area was operating without authorization and employing foreign teachers illegally." That's the key point and the key thing to take away from this video. A lot of times what you will see happen in Thailand where a foreigner gets really jammed up over the issue of Work Permit violations, it came from a tip off, it came from a local primarily, who sees something going on and they basically say, "That doesn't look right. Why is that foreigner doing that?" and sometimes it can be for things that pertain to work authorization generally; sometimes it can pertain to things where a Thai or the community sees that a foreign national is engaging in restricted occupations and they don't like it, and they basically call their local police precinct and say, "hey what's going on with this?" and then that leads to an investigation. And if indeed the person is working illegally or operating outside of their Work Permit in a restricted occupation in a capacity that results in illegality, that person could then be subject criminal penalties.

The point I'm trying to make with this video is that at the end of the day one of the big things that gets people jammed up here with regard to work authorization is being noted by the local community to be engaging in something that foreigners are not as a matter of course able to engage in. So that's the thing to take away from this video is it's not just the guys in uniforms coming around on a random basis, the community itself could feel that somebody is operating irregularly, inappropriately, in their community or that whatever the business activity is that is being undertaken is clearly restricted to Thais and they can go ahead and call in the authorities. And based on a tip-off like that, yeah, oftentimes the response from law enforcement is going to be not only more proactive, but even more stringent than you might see from just sort of random inspections.

So that the thing to take away from this video more than anything is if you are looking to come to Thailand to work, you need to get into work authorization to work here. Again, there's now this nebulousness associated with working remotely - again being engaged in offshore endeavours or something, again the authorities aren't so much looking into that - but those who are working here, and you know who you are. If you're working in Thailand, you really do know deep down if you are working in Thailand, I do believe that. If you are going to be working in Thailand, you need to seriously consider work authorization lest you find yourself having a bad time with law enforcement here in the Kingdom of Thailand.