Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing so-called sponsored Work Permits. I just dealt with a horror story situation last week. A client came to us after they had been dealing with a so-called sponsored Work Permit. The people who had provided this so-called sponsored Work Permit absolutely, well they did a terrible job and they left this person in a position where they almost fell into overstay and it could have resulted in a lot of real problems. If further law enforcement scrutiny had been involved, there could have been real problems for everybody involved. Fortunately for our client, they came to us; we saw what was going on; there were solutions for it; we dealt with it; we moved them on. 

But something that sort of came up that I was thinking about. I have discussed at length why so-called sponsored Work Permits are illegal in Thailand and that you are effectively not really working for the people you are claiming to work for which is the fundamental reason for the Work Permit. So on a very real level it is kind of, it could be argued to be a level of fraud. There is also another level of it which could arguably be deemed to be human trafficking if you wanted to look at it a certain way. 

I thought what was what was more interesting was this person was explaining because I was asking "Well how did you get into this? What did it cost? At what junctures did it cost money?" This person said "Oh it didn't cost anything. There were costs associated with getting it but then on going, they just took a percentage of my income as compensation for this." I just thought of that and I said "well that just sounds like a con to me." I mean in my mind, as we have discussed in many other videos in similar circumstances, it is better to just go ahead and set up your own company that way your own income is your own. Yes there are taxes associated with that; yes there are maintenance fees associated with maintaining a business, especially as a foreigner, maintaining a Work Permit and a Business Visa here in Thailand but at the end of the day the proceeds of your labour, again minus relevant taxes, are your own and anything else I would say there is a very strong argument that it is a con.