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Thai Immigration Seems More Concerned with Illegal Employment

Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing Thai Immigration.  There are many other videos on this channel, some of which were made contemporaneously to this one, where I am discussing many of the recent changes with respect to Immigration’s overall paradigm,  their enforcement activities, the way in which they go ahead and are now raiding various institutions to go ahead and find illegal foreigners here in the Kingdom. Also, there has been recent news with respect to a 30 day sort basically sort of a warning for those who are overstaying in the Kingdom that they are going to start cracking down heavily on over stayers within or around the end of a 30 day duration starting from October 9. How exactly this is going to play out remains to be seen.  

But another trend that I have noticed that has kind of arisen simultaneously to these trends has been it seems like Immigration is getting a little bit more concerned with respect to illegal workers in the Kingdom. In a recent article entitled, Thailand’s Immigration Given 1 Month to Arrest and Deport Thousands of Foreigners. It is from the Chiang Rai Times, chiangraitimes.com, quoting directly, “The Immigration Bureau was ordered to strictly enforce the law, weed out foreigners without visas and overstaying their visas and deport them within one month.” This is the operative point. “It was told to check whether foreigners doing business here were working in professions that were legally reserved for Thais.” I think that is something key to note. In another article entitled 97 Foreigners held in Visa Crackdown, published October 11, 2018 in the Nation, nationmultimedia.com. Quoting directly, “Those detained were mostly Indian, Laotian, Cambodian and Vietnamese. With 27 overstaying their visas and 43 entering illegally; 9 worked without permission and 2 had not notified the authorities about their accommodation.”

Two things to note in both of these articles. First of all, there is two kinds of illegal work in Thailand. There is working without any kind of permission and then there is working, perhaps with a work permit, but doing something that is perhaps relegated to protected status and restricted only to Thai nationals. There are certain undertakings which are restricted to only Thai Nationals. There are other videos on this channel where I discuss that at length but what I find interesting is this is not the Labor Ministry that is making this an issue, this is Immigration so I think this is just one more sort of arrow in the quiver for Immigration Authorities, a tool if you will to go ahead and root out what they consider to be bad actors here in the Kingdom, when they are going through these raids and things to basically go ahead, they are not only looking for over stayers, and more and more they are looking for folks who have not notified as to their accommodation but now I think it is probably safe to assume, especially in light of the proactive paradigm of this regime within the Immigration Office, that illegally working, whatever that may mean, may become a priority to Immigration Officers here in the Kingdom as well.