Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing an apparent working party if you will that is sort of being tasked with not only ascertaining but also essentially thwarting, Visa fraud, Immigration fraud, here in the Kingdom of Thailand. 

I thought of making this video after reading a recent article from the Pattaya Mail, that is pattayamail.com, the article is titled: Visa extensions for sick foreigners are now tougher to obtain. I urge those who are watching this video, go read that article in detail; a lot of insight in there, a lot of information. Quoting directly: "The crackdown appears to relate to a working party set up by Immigration Police Commander Lt Gen Pakpoompipat Sajjapan last November to close loopholes which had facilitated fraudulent Visa Extension applications based on voluntary work for foundations, being an adult language student or claiming to be ill."

So what we are talking about here is going back prior to October of 2022, we were dealing with what was called the Emergency Decree which was promulgated in March of 2020. We were dealing with that for a number of years and there was a great deal of discretion on the part of Immigration Officers here in country to allow folks to remain in status in Thailand as it was felt there was an exigent need to do that under those circumstances. That Emergency Decree ended I believe at the end of quarter 3 of 2022 and from quarter 4 onward, we have been dealing with sort of the status quo ante, we are back to the system that was in place in the first quarter of 2020. The result of that is yeah there's stricter enforcement. There is not this kind of lax discretion if you will to allow folks to stay in the Kingdom. This resulted in folks that apparently didn't have much other reason to be in Thailand or no reason that could be provided to Thai Immigration's satisfaction and it resulted in a lot of folks looking for ways to maintain status but in ways that really aren't all that conducive or in alignment if you will with what Thai Immigration, the purposes Thai Immigration will give to people staying here in the Kingdom long term. The upshot of that was folks went out and looked for these sort of fraudulent Volunteer Visas or in this case, and I urge those again who are watching this video go check out that article, where they are talking about medical. A lot of folks ran to the Medical Visa to try and maintain status. Well clearly Thai Immigration is taking this seriously as we have discussed in other videos. They have much more of a law enforcement paradigm now with respect to how they think about Thai Immigration. As a result, this is a situation wherein we are going to see a lot more stringent enforcement of Thai Immigration Law moving forward and I think an example of this is look they are scrutinizing Medical Visa applications much more thoroughly; again they get into that in the thrust of that article I quoted. At the same time we have done videos already talking about how look Education Visas are under increased scrutiny; Volunteer Visas are very difficult to obtain now if not impossible and they are certainly subject to increased scrutiny and as we have discussed in other videos, a prior volunteer visas may actually cause problems in the future application for a new visa. 

So the thing to take away from this video, the big one is look Thai Immigration is back; the Emergency Decree is over; they no longer have those same discretionary powers that they once did and Thai Immigration Law is being enforced and we are seeing that now in the form of people having difficulty maintaining their status here in the Kingdom of Thailand.