Richard Barrow and his visa

[reader]

From The Thaiger

Yesterday, Richard Barrow, a popular British blogger who has been living and working in Thailand for decades, says he had a surprise visit from the immigration bureau in regards to the renewal of his visa. Kapook reported the incident on their page saying that many Thai people admire the work he does for Thailand as a tourism and expat influencer.

Richard bemoaned on his Facebook page that “things didn’t look good” for an extension of his visa to stay in Thailand.

“Bangkok Immigration came to inspect my workplace. They were here for 3 hours. Looks like they will not extend my “visa”. They said I will probably have to leave the country. They will give me a final verdict next week.”

Social media has been full of speculation about Richard’s possible departure and assuming that it has something to do with his occasional swipes at Thai officialdom on his blogs. But Richard says none of that is true.

“I know a lot of people are speculating about the reasons with some crazy conspiracy theories. The Immigration officials gave me no indication that they were targeting me. I only passed last year because some influential people in government called the chief of Immigration.”

“In normal years, I would leave the country and come back with a tourist visa and start again. With the borders closed, my only option is to fly back to the UK. As I won’t have a Non-B visa, I cannot come back for months. Unfortunately, the family home in the UK is being sold.”

In the past few years Richard has had an annual wait to see if his application to stay would be approved. In the end he’s been able to pull in a few favours and make contact with leading officials to “sort things out”.

Richard has contacts at many levels of Thai society and is generally recognised as a ardent enthusiast about Thai life and is loyally followed by over 100,000 people on his Facebook page.

 

[anddy]

He just posted on twitter that he got his 1 year extension

[reader]

From Richardbarrow.com

"I want to make it very clear that it had nothing to do with my activities on social media. I work for a small company that contracts me out to work at the school. Although the paperwork was passed by my local Immigration, officials in Bangkok have stricter criteria."