Transcript of the above video: 

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing Thai Immigration talking about tightening up the controls associated with Immigration here in Thailand. I thought of making this video after reading a recent article from the Bangkok Post, bangkokpost.com, the article is titled: Crackdown on student visa abuse continues. Quoting directly: "The move reflects Thailand's broader efforts to tighten Immigration controls and prevent misuse of educational channels for unauthorized residency or other illicit activities." 

So it's important to note, as I have discussed in other videos, the Immigration apparatus is often concerned with Education Visas because unfortunately they are often used as a pipeline for folks coming into Thailand to do things that they are not really supposed to be doing. So they say they are coming here to study; in the past a big one was, “I am here to study Thai” and a lot of people weren't really studying Thai. It was all just kind of a visa mill kind of situation. More recently we have seen concerns - and I think that we are starting to see increasing concerns - in the so-called “soft power” categories associated with the Destination Thailand Visa. I've talked to Immigration Officers myself who have said, yeah, we are starting to look at that and there's a lot more scrutiny on that; there's a lot more scrutiny on Education Visas. We are all seeing banking issues associated with maintaining bank accounts, banking facilities, on visas like the Destination Thailand Visa. I also made another video contemporaneously with this one where we talked about the fact that tens of thousands of visas are actually being affirmatively canceled. So across the board, Immigration is tightening up a lot; cracking down would not be an inaccurate statement. 

Quoting further: "The accusations first surfaced after former politician Chuvit Kamolvisit alleged that three Immigration Bureau commanders in Khon Kaen and Chiang Mai were accepting bribes between 100,000 and 300,000 baht for each Non-immigrant Visa approved. In many cases, documents issued by language schools and volunteer foundations were used to support applications for Visa extensions." 

Yeah, and as we have discussed in other videos, Volunteer Visas can also be a really tricky thing. There are some volunteer organizations that are very legitimate here in Thailand. Unfortunately, there are other organizations that are far from it. Quoting further: "On Friday, Sudawan Wangsuphakijkosol, the Higher Education Minister, said the Immigration Bureau had revoked temporary stay permits for nearly 10,000 foreign nationals whose visa status failed to comply with regulations." Yeah, we are seeing a lot of folks losing Visa status. This is also coming on the heels of a lot of folks seeing their banking facilities, they are having to either show up and basically resubmit their documentation associated with banking, or they are being told, "hey you are not going to be allowed to bank," most notably on Destination Thailand Visas. 

So across the board, we are seeing a lot of activity as it pertains to foreigners and specifically one of the big ones is, and look this through-line by the way, this is not particularly recent when it comes to Education Visas. I did videos going back over five years ago, in fact it was like seven years ago back into 2018 and '19, where "Big Joke", Surachate Hakparn was then the Immigration Head. He did a major crackdown on Education Visas and ever since that time I have said, look that is a Visa that is heavily scrutinized and you better be well in line with the protocols associated with that Visa or you can find yourself in a really bad position i.e. see your status canceled, as has been seen with 10,000 of these Visa cancellations. 

So again, it's looking more and more like folks that are here on visa status that they are not really, basically people that are lying or using subterfuge to maintain visa status here in Thailand, those that are doing that, are going to find themselves in a situation where they are not going to have a Visa here in the Kingdom of Thailand.