Transcript of the above video: 

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing Work Permit violations as a knock-on offense. What are we talking about here? I thought of making this video after reading a recent article from the Phuket News that is thephuketnews.com. I did another video contemporaneously with this one where we discussed the Cannabis implications, the legal implications associated with cannabis, foreigners, illegality regarding Cannabis and foreigners, how all that interacts. I did another video on that. I urge those are watching this video go check that out for more information on that.

But long story short, there was a foreigner; I redacted his name in the prior video; I'll continue to redact. He was arrested here in Thailand; he had about a kilogram of Cannabis, had some vapes and e-cigarettes and all of this stuff. The person got arrested, it's a problem. I go into the legal analysis in another video. That said, I want to quote one more line from that particular article, quoting directly: "He is also charged with working in Thailand without a valid Work Permit", and that brought up a good point in my mind to bring up, 2 points actually. One about Cannabis specifically which is as discussed in the other video, notwithstanding the fact one may have a corporate interest in a Cannabis operation and may even be Work Permitted in said Cannabis operation, Cannabis remains agricultural, and agricultural endeavours continue to be restricted here in Thailand. So engaging as a foreigner directly in Cannabis activities - as this person found out in this article - can have really detrimental consequences and could even have criminal penalties, okay. So the thing to take away there is understand that even with a Work Permit, Cannabis is something to proceed with caution on here in Thailand. 

Now that said, generally speaking, this is another good point regarding Work Permits here which is the fact that Work Permit violations often act as like a “knock-on” charge. You will see this a lot of times in these cases where a foreigner will be arrested doing something or engaged in some kind of activity that may not even really be all that related to work authorization per se - if they had had a Work Permit it wouldn't have been a problem - but the fact that they were caught out without one resulted in an extra charge, a “knock-on” charge if you will, that then operates independently but it's just one more thing to pile on. 

And the reason I bring it up is it's just one more argument in favour of getting a Work Permit because even if you get into some kind of problem for some other thing and that other thing may be innocuous; in fact I have seen situations where folks from the local Khet here in Bangkok basically that's sort of like the city planners office, will show up to places and they will be looking at things, like in this one particular case this guy wanted to set up a restaurant and these folks showed up out there and there just happened to be an Immigration Police guy that was around in the area and he was showing them around, he didn't have a Work Permit, he got in trouble. I also saw a guy that he was putting up a picture in his wife's restaurant basically, didn't have a Work Permit, got cited for a Work Permit violation. It seems kind of ticky tacky, and I do get that. You need to understand from the Thai perspective it's not ticky tacky, it's very important that the labour pool here in Thailand you know remains Thai or remains in Thai favour, let's put it that way. 

But that said and the thing to take away from this video more than anything, is getting a Work Permit is a good idea just to avoid the possibility of one of these "knock-on" charges on top of other problems.