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ResourcesVisa & Immigration LawThailand Immigration LawChanging from a BOI Visa to Another Thai Visa

Changing from a BOI Visa to Another Thai Visa

Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing BOI visas and we are discussing changing or converting one's BOI Visa to another Visa in Thailand.

This is something that comes up actually with more frequency than you would think being that there are seemingly not an overabundance of folks that are here in BOI status. You often see this when somebody is for example their career is ending and they are no longer going to work and they are looking to change over to a Retirement Visa for example. Sometimes it is folks who are leaving employment at a BOI Company and they are changing over to another company that may not have BOI certification. Is it possible to change one's status? 

Well let me preface all of this by saying it is going to be very dependent on the circumstances. Change of status in Thailand is already a pretty difficult process I would say. You have got to show a lot of reasons why an Immigration Officer should make a favorable use of their discretion to allow you to change status. As noted in other videos on this channel, the presumption for all of these Non-Immigrant Visas is that folks in this status are here in Thailand temporarily. So the presumption is, the prevailing paradigm is, those folks need to leave Thailand if they want to change their status to another temporary type status; so that is the first thing to understand. The next thing to understand is that in very much a real way, BOI s very much stove piped. It is off on its own in the sense of Immigration; it kind of has its own Immigration system. Especially in the form of the One-Stop Center that deals with BOI matters. Leaving that system can prove a little bit difficult because in certain ways, for lack of a better term, the two different Immigration systems, the standard Immigration and BOI Immigration, they don't interact in a particularly streamlined way because they do things differently and they have a different mandate. Under Thai Immigration Law, the Immigration Act, it specifically notes BOI and then it also notes Business; just sort of standard business and other types of Visa categories. 

So again you can see within the legal framework that they have carved out a specific sort of section there for BOI and it sort of operates mutually exclusive to other sections of the Act. That being said while it is not impossible under certain circumstances to perhaps change status out of BOI status, it is probably a good idea to contact a legal professional in order to gain some insight and guidance into how best to do that.