What REALLY happens when Immigration inspect a school

[brucetefl 137]

I have lived in Thailand for 18 years and I have heard of it happening only a handful of times but I have only experienced this once, firsthand.

But before I share my experience, I would love to hear from others and their first-hand experience. What happened, start to finish.

[aidenai 561]

But before I share my experience, I would love to hear from others and their first-hand experience. What happened, start to finish.

That's funny! You start a thread, don't post any content and want other members to post content first.

Edited July 5, 2014 by aidenai

[brucetefl 137]

Its a question, why not? Lots of people ask questions on the forum, right?

[WonnabeBiker 138]

Well, I'll bite. No first-hand experience, except with schools bending the rules.

One school never ever bothered with any of the legal requirements. Be that a B-Visa, a WP or some change of status. Or any kind of "reporting" on who they hired as teachers to their Regional Education office or the TCT (Krusrapa).

That school posted names and photographs of their staff on their website.

something tells me, that Immigration isn't that interested in coming after directors. Am I wrong as prohibition?

[brucetefl 137]

I am waiting for the experts to give their experiences. I might wait 24 hours. But I think very few people, if any on this forum, have actually experienced a school being raided by Immigration.

[inutil 375]

Im going to assume the same thing that happens when a teacher gets a surprise observation class. They get two months notice to prepare the class and make the principal look good.

[brucetefl 137]

The reason I bring this up is because here we are on the "Teaching English in Thailand" forum and I've only heard of a few people ever getting "caught" teaching English without a work permit. And this is over 18 years experience in Thailand. So let's make one point very clear: these kinds of raids and checks are extremely rare. I think it would be fair to say that they almost never happen.

So with that established, let's discuss what does happen on the rare occasion that immigration visit to school and checks everyone for the legal status.

If immigration finds teachers in the school that do not have all documentation for legal work status, they put those teachers in a room and told him to sit down and wait. They then have a private discussion with the director of the school. Perhaps negotiation is the better term. The school director is told to get together some sum of money as a fine. The director will try to negotiate and eventually a figure will be agreed upon and that money will be handed over to the immigration officer. Once the director does a bank run, the teachers are then told they are free to go.

That's it.

Now on to the myth of deportation:

In all of my time in Thailand I have never heard of anyone being deported for working as an English teacher illegally. I've heard of a few teachers being deported, but it's always associated with something else that they've done, overstayed their visas by years, broken some significant law, or managed to get a very powerful enemy.

Does anyone else have any examples of English teachers being deported in the time they've lived in Thailand? Yet we all know there are tens of thousands of teachers teaching illegally here in the kingdom. Isn't it therefore pretty obvious that teachers teaching illegally do not get deported? Or even in any real trouble?

Every few days someone posts that they want to teach English in Thailand but for some reason, like a lack of a university degree, it's unlikely they can easily get legal status. And there are always dozens of posters warning about the dangers of deportation. One of the recent threads warned of possibly being deported for teaching as a volunteer in a small rural school.

Can we all agree that this is just a myth? A law that is obviously almost never enforced in Thailand.

Edited July 5, 2014 by brucetefl

[up-country_sinclair 2,900]

we all know there are tens of thousands of teachers teaching illegally here in the kingdom.

I don't know who this "we" you are referring to is, but I certainly don't know this.

How do you know this?

[Thighlander 494]

The recent crackdown on visa runners has been aimed at teachers working illegally. The visa run vans used to be about half teachers in Chiang Mai...back when it was only 5 usd to go to Myanmar, you got 30 days, with no count or limit......

[brucetefl 137]

The crackdown has been publicly announced to be targeting Russians and Chinese, very few of whom are probably teaching English.

[inutil 375]

ahhh you guys...

Edited July 5, 2014 by inutil

[aidenai 561]

@ brucetefl - you should be banned from this forum. You're claiming that working illegally won't give any problems to foreign teachers of English. So teach away but of course with a TEFL course from your company.

Look back at my first post. After members didn't post their experience, you started sharing 'your' experience. You've forgotten the story of 'hippo'. You also deny the existence of foreign teachers who got busted and don't want to shout this from the roofs.

[Scott 16,143]

Some years back, I know of a school that had a visit by the local immigration. A teacher has been detained while getting a non-immigrant B visa with a forged document. The document was a Thai document, but the teacher was the one arrested. After a rather tense and long day, he was released after a the director paid 70,000 baht and vowed to find out who had done it. It's fairly hard for foreign teachers, especially this guy who was new to Thailand, to forge a Thai document. It turned out it was a secretary and she eventually was jailed, albeit for a short time (a few days).

The school was on the immigration poop list and they made a surprise visit. The problem, I presume, is that if it is a large school, they are going to have trouble figuring out who is who. In this case they looked around, but in the end they chose to simply inspect the documentation on all the teachers. Of course, if someone didn't have documentation, for all intents and purposes, they didn't exist as a teacher.

I had a friend who worked at a school that had a surprise visit by immigration and apparently had some frightened teachers who promptly fled over the wall.

At a lot of schools, immigration would have to have access to the sign-in list, payroll list or some other record and then would have to check for appropriate paperwork. In general, I think that sounds like a lot of work and I've not known to many gov't agencies that are interested in doing too much work.

[aidenai 561]

I am waiting for the experts to give their experiences. I might wait 24 hours. But I think very few people, if any on this forum, have actually experienced a school being raided by Immigration.

What clock are you using?

[brucetefl 137]

Spare me. Thats just silly. I asked for real first-hand expereince with teachers who worked illegally and were then deported.

Used fake documents? Yes it happens. Get caught for some other crime like oversay? OK, sure.

But ANYONE, who has been deported? Or even fined? For just teaching without a work permit? In 18 years not only have I not seen it, I have not even heard of it!

The school gets in trouble, not (from my experience and apparently from anyone else's) the teachers.

I have practicatlly nothing to do with the operation of TEFL International now. I operate no centers and do not even have a marketing website. I am just trying to give REAL information instead of the obviously inaccurate info given by others (IF YOU VOLUNTEER TO TEACH ENGLISH AT A POOR RURAL SCHOOL YOU WILL BE DEPORTED!!!)

The guy who started that thread, Costas2008, will not ever be my customer. I do not care. The forum is for real info. I have been here 18 years. Most of the scare mongers here are just full of crap.

@ brucetefl - you should be banned from this forum. You're claiming that working illegally won't give any problems to foreign teachers of English. So teach away but of course with a TEFL course from your company.

Look back at my first post. After members didn't post their experience, you started sharing 'your' experience. You've forgotten the story of 'hippo'. You also deny the existence of foreign teachers who got busted and don't want to shout this from the roofs.

Edited July 5, 2014 by brucetefl