Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing tightening of visa rules here in the Kingdom. I thought of making this video after reading a recent article from the Thai Examiner, that's thaiexaminer.com, the article is titled: Crackdown on foreign tourism abuses with police in hotspots targeting Chinese and Russian gangs. Quoting directly: "Thai Authorities last week announced the closure of a Thai registered tourism business which ran up 14 million Baht in unpaid debt and the withdrawal of the firm's license by the Ministry of Tourism. The news comes as a nationwide crackdown by police forces and government inspectors has been launched into abuses within the foreign tourism industry particularly in tourism hot spots such as Phuket where foreigners, notably Russian nationals, on extended stays on the island, have begun to undertake unregulated and illegal commercial activities linked with the tourism industry. The moves are also being accompanied by a renewed crackdown and tightening of regulations in the Visa regime." 

Now again as usual, Thai Examiner does a great job, a very expansive job, a lot of information in that article. I urge folks who are watching this video go over and check out that article on thaiexaminer.com on their website. As they point out, there seems to be something of a focus based on nationality both in the title and in the actual excerpt quoted where it seems to be some concentration on Chinese and Russian nationals. As I have said before in many other videos both about US Immigration and Thai Immigration, do not be lulled into a sense of complacency when you read things that say or even you see information that says "oh well, they are targeting this particular group of people." That has not been my experience. It's not the reality of the way Immigration apparatuses wherever they are, apparati, whatever you want to call it, wherever they are, so United States Immigration, Thai Immigration once they sort of start scrutinizing, it becomes very broad very quickly. I remember with the so-called Muslim ban, so-called during the Trump Administration where they targeted I think was like a half dozen countries to ban Immigration from those countries, and reasonable people obviously can disagree about that, but I said at the time there would be broad implications for that and we did the videos on that. Yeah lo and behold there ended up being a worldwide program utilizing some of the methodologies in a broad sense that were being utilized supposedly in the limited sense of just these few countries. 

Again, sort of getting caught up in nationality, it is the same way. At the end of the day, when Immigration starts doing something or they start going a certain direction or they adopt new methodologies, in my experience it ends up being broadly enforced. Now what is that mean? It could just mean heightened scrutiny and if all of your documentation with regard to your Thai Immigration status is in order, this really isn't something to worry about. For those folks who in my opinion, especially the past few months, have been rather cavalier in their activities here in Thailand, again if your paperwork isn't in order, if your documentation regarding your Thai lawful status isn't both up-to-date and correct, that could lead to some real problems and I think Thai Immigration is dedicating more resources to that end.