brucetefl

At least in America, where general education is up to 50% of your university education, I think most people do gain certain English skills especially writing research papers.

There are many full time jobs available.

Why all the negativity and snarky replies?

I think it pizzed off a couple on how the question was posed.

Ppl that want to go this route should understand, just because you know English does not mean you can teach as I would be dreadful.. Also, like one has mentioned, it's not like it once was as many now have to work at multiple schools just to get full time hours.

I'd suggest Vietnam or Cambodia, they need teachers there..

DING DING DING DING WE HAVE A WINNER!.

A few people constantly accuse me of posting things because of financial gain. Its just absolutely not true.

I just post reality and honesty. At least as I see and experience it.

Sure, I could list advantages of getting your BA in TESOL. But when I am here on the discussion forum my motivation is telling people how it really is. Thats why I think its these other guys who have agendas, because it isn't me (as you have pointed out).

But if they want a waiver, join my BA TESOL. All the better for me. PANIC EVERYONE PANIC!

lol

Why would somebody want to join your BA TESOL. It's you who's spreading the word that there's no risk at all in teaching without a work permit, i.e. university degree, provisional teaching, non-immigrant B visa, etc.

Waste of money and time to do your BA TESOL programme then, no?

Do you know there have been 21 coups or coup attempts in Thailand in the last 100 years?

One coup or attempted coup every 5 years. And how much has changed? Exactly. Not much.

The military is trying to make friends now. If they raided the big English chains they would make a lot of people unhappy--school owners and parents of school students. probably not a good idea.

If they started raiding K-12 schools the reaction would be even worse.

Yes it could happen. But the odds are really against anything like that happening. you can argue that the Cambodian is taking away from a Thai worker or that the Russian is working with the mafia in Pattaya. But everyone wants native speakers to teach their kids english. And ASEAN is coming.

I know, Chicken Little, the sky is falling. I just do not see it.

But if they want a waiver, join my BA TESOL. All the better for me. PANIC EVERYONE PANIC!

lol

Just so we are clear, here is what is NOT allowed if you do not have a work permit (except under very special circumstances):

Work: engaging in work by exerting energy or using knowledge whether or not in consideration of wages or other benefits.

So you cannot exert energy (walking, standing, BREATHING????) or use knowledge (reading a book????)

Hey, its the law. No breathing until you get that work permit!

Otherwise you will be constantly looking over your shoulder!

How so?

stranger and stranger

Um.... WE KNOW.

As is prostitution.

As is cooking if you have anything but a B visa and work permit.

As is washing your dishes if you have anything but a B visa and work permit.

As is doing laundry if you have anything but a B visa and work permit.

But that was another thread. This thread is about what happens if you are working professionally at a school without proper visa and WP and the school is raided.

The reason I created this thread (and it has been repeated at least three times if you read it) was in reaction to someone asking if they could volunteer as an English teacher at a small rural school near his home. He was immediately told by several posters that he would be risking fines and deportation if he volunteered there.

And as I mentioned in the thread, most likely he would become A very respected member of the community, be given fruit and food by local farmers, invited to a lot of parties, but certainly not fined and deported.

I'm just trying to figure out why some people are so willing to tell people things that simply aren't true. Of course, stealing their girlfriend was just tongue in cheek. But why would someone tell this person they would be fined and deported when it apparently never happens, even to teachers who are working professionally, not volunteering.

Just because the community would'nt turn him in does not mean the law is not being broken
It is against the law; full stop

Sent from my GT-I9300T using Thaivisa Connect Thailand mobile app

Well I am not a teacher but I do know the difference between you're and your.

LOL

Add something to the discussion or go away. I do not care how you feel about me or my logic. But your inability to do anything but say that my logic is flawed speaks volumes.

SORRY I FOGOT TO USE CAPS!

a degree is needed to obtain a TCT waiver but your students don't have one yet, how do they obtain waivers?

Don't ask me. All I know is its happening.

The reason I created this thread (and it has been repeated at least three times if you read it) was in reaction to someone asking if they could volunteer as an English teacher at a small rural school near his home. He was immediately told by several posters that he would be risking fines and deportation if he volunteered there.

And as I mentioned in the thread, most likely he would become A very respected member of the community, be given fruit and food by local farmers, invited to a lot of parties, but certainly not fined and deported.

I'm just trying to figure out why some people are so willing to tell people things that simply aren't true. Of course, stealing their girlfriend was just tongue in cheek. But why would someone tell this person they would be fined and deported when it apparently never happens, even to teachers who are working professionally, not volunteering.

I guess you did not read any other threads about the BA TESOL (of course thats not surprising if it oes not interest you). We actually do not have many of our teachers on Education visas. Most get B visas and work permits with TCT waivers.

You guys like to accuse me of all kinds of crap without evidence. All I am trying to do is tell people the real scoop. It would seem you guys have more of an agenda than I do. Why make up crap about being fined and deported when it apparently never happens? Afraid someone better looking will steal your girl? There are others! lol

Not until you graduate after 4 years of study. Until then, you encourage them to work on non-imm EDs. I guess that's what this thread is about - reassuring your 'students'.

Nor do I! Much better to take a BA TESOL course and get a TCT exemption! THEN I make more money. See how that works?

I am just giving people real info based upon personal experience. Whether it fits my agenda or not.

No offense, up country, but you are one of the champions of the "work without all proper documentation and you will be deported" club. Certainly if you had any first hand knowledge you would post it.

I have never broken Thai immigration law, so no, I don't have first hand knowledge.

I also have no financial stake in playing down the risks inherent to breaking immigration law.

Nor do I! Much better to take a BA TESOL course and get a TCT exemption! THEN I make more money. See how that works?

I am just giving people real info based upon personal experience. Whether it fits my agenda or not.

No offense, up country, but you are one of the champions of the "work without all proper documentation and you will be deported" club. Certainly if you had any first hand knowledge you would post it.

I have never broken Thai immigration law, so no, I don't have first hand knowledge.

I also have no financial stake in playing down the risks inherent to breaking immigration law.

I have been here 18 years and all of that time involved in some way with English teachers and English teaching. I have literally known THOUSANDS (love those caps) of teachers who have taught without proper documentation. I am probably one of the few who have actually been in a school as it was raided and was high enough in the leadership that I was actually with the director as she scrambled to get money to pay off immigration. So its not like I am a newbie with no basis for forming a strong opinion.

And because some of you might find interesting, let me tell you the circumstances behind that raid.

Two teachers have been employed and all of their documents have been submitted to Labor. However, the contracts have been signed almost a month before and so Labor asked the school to come in, take back all the documents and resubmit them with new contracts.

So for you that don't understand, these teachers had actually been legal because their documents had been in the hands of Department of Labor. But when those documents or returned they were no longer legal. The documents were no longer "in process".

As if by magic (heavy sarcasm there) late that afternoon immigration arrived at the school. Those two teachers were technically illegal. The director was asked for 80,000.

It would take a blind man not to see that this was all a cooperative effort between the Department of Labor and the Department of immigration. The moment those documents were returned to the school Labor called Immigration and told them to visit the school. I'm guessing they split the money.

I've been here a long time. Maybe I'm giving overly cynical. But could you blame me?

Yes I'm sure people operating under a pseudonym on a forum are so embarrassed and would never ever tell people that they had been fined or deported. The shame! LOL

You are kidding, right?

And all are asking for is any real eyewitness evidence. It doesn't have to be you. It could be someone that you actually know. But apparently no one even knows anyone that this is happened to. At the very least, although you won't admit it, it's a very rare occurrence.

Posted, yes. But if you have no contradictory evidence then you would not post.

Correct?

No, not correct.

Are you unable to fathom that someone who had been fined, jailed or deported wouldn't want to advertise that fact on the forum.

And I'll post it again. You yourself posted that there are "tens of thousands" of teachers working illegally in Thailand. What percentage of those do you think have viewed this thread?

Posted, yes. But if you have no contradictory evidence then you would not post.

Correct?

No offense, up country, but you are one of the champions of the "work without all proper documentation and you will be deported" club. Certainly if you had any first hand knowledge you would post it.

...and unable to contradict my initial hypothesis.

All I really did was use the Scientific Method.

I constructed a hypothesis "Teachers do not actually get fined or deported for working under tourist/EDU visas" and sent it out to the world to prove or disprove.

After five days and no contradictory evidence (first or second person accounts of teachers being fined or deported) my hypothesis is holding up very well.

I am not sure why that would anger or upset you.

Ajunadawn....

Huh?

I LOVE CAPS

lol

Actually this thread is here to allow people, dozens, hundreds, THOUSANDS of people to contradict me. I will then slink away quietly after admitting my personal experience is incorrect.

But GUESS WHAT (including caps just to be annoying now hehe) it seems I was correct. So far not a single (see how nice I was to avoid caps there???) poster on this forum has had first or second hand experience with this happening. And a lot of people have viewed this thread.

So sorry, its your logic that needs a bit of a wake up call.

OP, you might incidentally be correct about this or that but your comments are wholly supposition, generalizations, and faulty reasoning. You make an observation based on the immediate event in your world that you experience, extrapolate that into a universal truth about teaching & immigration, then try to collect others to see your conclusion? You have no idea about teaching/immigration stats. Following your reasoning is dizzying.

Quite frankly, your a mess of shouting (see CAPS), defensiveness, and false logic. Good luck with your teaching.

I will step back and allow the masses to muse in your drama.

Ajunadawn....

Huh?

I LOVE CAPS

lol

Actually this thread is here to allow people, dozens, hundreds, THOUSANDS of people to contradict me. I will then slink away quietly after admitting my personal experience is incorrect.

But GUESS WHAT (including caps just to be annoying now hehe) it seems I was correct. So far not a single (see how nice I was to avoid caps there???) poster on this forum has had first or second hand experience with this happening. And a lot of people have viewed this thread.

So sorry, its your logic that needs a bit of a wake up call.

OP, you might incidentally be correct about this or that but your comments are wholly supposition, generalizations, and faulty reasoning. You make an observation based on the immediate event in your world that you experience, extrapolate that into a universal truth about teaching & immigration, then try to collect others to see your conclusion? You have no idea about teaching/immigration stats. Following your reasoning is dizzying.

Quite frankly, your a mess of shouting (see CAPS), defensiveness, and false logic. Good luck with your teaching.

First or even second hand events are ok by me. Not "my freind told me about something that happened to his friends".

For the Phetsakem school, I am guessing a few things happened:

1. Director made someone mad by refusing to pay something.

2. School was issuing fake documents which then fell back on the teachers or the school encouaged them to create fake documents.

But even if it did happen, we are talking very rare. And Phetkasem is, in fact, 3rd hand information.

I think if people start a post they should reply to as many posts as they can. I hate it when people don’t answer questions others have bothered to ask them, about their related to posts. Thanks Bruce for staying with your post .

The question Bruce asked was how many people have had “first hand experience”. It’s a very good question, and to understand the present and the future it’s a good idea to know the past accurately.

I have been trying since the “costas2008” post to answer the same question. I am using Thai people to contact legal departments and government offices to find an answer. So far (1 week) I cannot get a simple straight answer.

Yes there are vague stories about other people, without school names, dates ect. But as Bruce has clearly asked how many people have had” first hand accounts”. When were YOU affected.

You can break whatever laws you want it’s your life. You can risk fines, deportation and jail it’s your life. But it’s nice to know the actual risk.

I think the visa run situation will finish all teachers on a tourist visa situation anyway .Others that hide behind a different type of visa, and still teach, need to know what is the true risk and punishment.

Loaded, I never said Thai language schools were breaking the law. I was referring to the "impending" crackdown for people abusing the system. And certainly most people taking Thai language classes are doing so to abuse the system.

Because we all know those Thai students are going to class 2 hours every week (maybe) and the rest of the time they are sitting in their rooms not breaking any laws...

LOL PM me and I will put you in touch with him.

Yes and here is what they told him:

Just play games and get the kids to have fun. We just want them to show up.

Do they have any more vacancies???

IF THEY BECOME AWARE?

The Thai language schools are BLATANT in their selling of Education visas. have you seen some of their advertising?

STAY IN THAILAND

GET A LEGAL VISA

NO MORE VISA RUNS

study thai (DISCOUNT IF YOU DO NOT EVEN BOTHER TO SHOW UP FOR CLASS)

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.

You seem very confident about all this, but it's based on past experience. There's a new sheriff in town, and things have been changing fast. Whatever their real motivation might be, it appears that the coup-makers are intent on cleaning up the streets and getting people to do things by the book. They're clamping down on border runs, illegal taxis, buses, trains, and automobiles. Etc. Don't be so sure that they're only after certain 'kinds' of foreigners, such as Chinese and Russians. The stricter enforcement around border-runners and over-stayers shows that farangs are nothing special. Give them time. If they (the powers that now be) are aware that English language schools are doing dodgy things re teachers and student visas, there will likely be more visits from Immigration. The game has changed, and no-one should be complacent ...

The main reason I started this thread was in response to the guy who asked if he should volunteer teach.

At a rural school.

Where no other teacher could even speak English.

At the request of the director.

And he was flooded with responses about how he would be deported and about how illegal it was.

Things may be changing for English teachers. The only change received so far is that there will be no more visa runs. That's not difficult to get around.

But the scare mongers on this board giving absolutely inaccurate information astound me.

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.

You seem very confident about all this, but it's based on past experience. There's a new sheriff in town, and things have been changing fast. Whatever their real motivation might be, it appears that the coup-makers are intent on cleaning up the streets and getting people to do things by the book. They're clamping down on border runs, illegal taxis, buses, trains, and automobiles. Etc. Don't be so sure that they're only after certain 'kinds' of foreigners, such as Chinese and Russians. The stricter enforcement around border-runners and over-stayers shows that farangs are nothing special. Give them time. If they (the powers that now be) are aware that English language schools are doing dodgy things re teachers and student visas, there will likely be more visits from Immigration. The game has changed, and no-one should be complacent ...

If its just thousands then its 9,999. And 1/2. lol

I know hundreds myself.

So they had to spend the night in jail? What jail? When you said they went to jail, my guess is they took them to an immigration Office somewhere. Generally immigration has its own jail. It's not a place where all the Thai bad guys go. I think now its out at Chaeng Wattana. Basically it's a place where people wait to be deported.

That's the first I've heard of even that happening. Apparently the director didn't get his money together quickly enough that day.

Yes and here is what they told him:

Just play games and get the kids to have fun. We just want them to show up.