Transcript of the above video: 

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing a "Cleanup" of Thai Immigration. I thought of making this video after reading a recent article from the Bangkok post, bangkokpost.com - it was actually an editorial: Time to clean up visas. Quoting directly: "The big question is how Immigration Police and the Interior Ministry have let this blatant Visa abuse go on for as long as it has." 

Well part of it is we haven't had all this digitization for as long as forever. In the analog days it was a lot easier to overlook things when everything was on paper; now not so much. Quoting further: "Tackling the student visa issue is overdue, and as part of that, the Government must now improve its digital database to track student and extended-stay visa holders. Above all, the government and law enforcement agencies must remove unscrupulous officials. Without officials being complicit, such Visa abuses cannot happen." 

You know, I don't know about officials. I think oftentimes there is always a quick jump to say that somebody in the apparatus has done something wrong, so let's leave that there. That being said, what does this portend for the expat Community here in Thailand? For folks that want to live here. Well, when they are talking about a major cleanup, you can bet one of the upshots is probably going to be heightened scrutiny of visa applications, more stringent enforcement of visa rules and just generally kind of a tightening up of matters pertaining to Immigration. 

Now again it is hard to predict exactly how this is going to play out, like will we see it only in the Student Visa, Education Visa sector? Or will it spread out to things like the Retirement Visa section or the Business Visa section which Business Visas are already under intense scrutiny so that is already there. But as we have talked in other videos, O Marriage Visas are oftentimes subject to a heightened scrutiny after a scandal some years back involving fraudulent marriages that were being utilized to basically act as the basis for O Marriage Visas, so there is a lot of scrutiny there. 

However, basically the overarching trend seems to be one of increasing scrutiny regarding visas and regarding visa holders here in the Kingdom of Thailand and we will certainly be on hand to update folks as that situation evolves.