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ResourcesVisa & Immigration LawThailand Immigration LawCan a Thai Tourist Visa Support a Work Permit?

Can a Thai Tourist Visa Support a Work Permit?

Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing Work Permits and Thai Tourist Visas. 

This is a question that came up a lot over the last 6 months. I meant to make a video for a far longer time than this one. I think I have made videos that sort of circled this topic but didn't get to it directly. 

Can a Tourist Visa support a Work Permit? The short answer "no" and it is a common misconception of how Work Permits work or I should say not to be redundant, how they operate in practice. So Work Permits can only be issued to certain visas which can act as a platform for such a Work Permit notably and routinely we see this with Business Visas and O Visas for marriage. Those are basically the only types of visas and obviously under Business Visa there is Business Visas for teachers; Business Visas for Board of Investment companies, BOI; there are all types of Business Visas but Business Visa and O Marriage are the only visas that as a routine matter can support a Work Permit. There are other exceptions to that. Things like Media Visas can be a little bit different; I am not going to get into that. 

Long story short for this video No, a Tourist Visa cannot support a Work Permit. In fact it is specifically not authorized to support a Work Permit. It is provided for tourism purposes only. We have seen a lot of folks that have contacted us since the Amnesty has come and gone now, but that are in Non- Immigrant status that got stuck here and are looking to possibly get a job and No, a Tourist Visa cannot directly get one a Work Permit. That stated it may be possible to affect a conversion of status in Thailand into Business Visa status and thereby the Visa can support the Work Permit. So once you have a Business Visa it may then be possible to go ahead and get a Work Permit and then extend one's visa and Work Permit status thereafter.

Now again, that is all going to be very fact dependent, very case specific, very circumstantially dependent. The facts of your case are greatly going to impact exactly how that's going to work. That stated it is in theory at least possible. It is more possible under current circumstances than it would have been say a year ago. That stated, it may be a good idea to go ahead and contact a legal professional in order to gain some insight and guidance into how best to undertake that type of thing.