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As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing BOI Visas and conversion into standard B Visas. What are we talking about here? This happens where somebody will be working at a BOI, it will usually be a bigger concern here in Thailand and they will be have been doing their B Visas and their Work Permits through the One-Stop system which caters to BOI but now perhaps they are moving on from that job and maybe they are starting up their own Company or they are looking to work in a bit of a smaller company that does not have BOI Certification. They have got to essentially change Visas.

In a very real sense, visas that operate under the auspices of BOI are almost a different category than just a standard Visa business associated with a small to medium size operation here in Thailand. For this reason, in a sense you are converting status and you are going from dealing with one office to another. In a very real sense, BOI is on a different parallel track with respect to business immigration here in Thailand. There is a lot of work associated with this. Those who are looking to do this, you should look be planning on getting your ducks in a row well in advance. This is not a matter of just a week out you can go ahead and convert over. No, you have to get a lot of things in order and in line and your ducks in a row to convert out of BOI and into standard B Visa. In the past, we would usually see folks just leave the country, let their BOI Visa be extinguished and then they come back in. To be clear, there is not a specific BOI Visa, they are both Business Visas. They are just handled by different offices. One is the One-stop service Centre and the other is the standard regular Immigration office and they can be like night and day in the way that they handle things. Their internal protocols are very different and the standard of Immigration Office, frankly they just have a higher caseload so you are dealing with some other difficulties associated with that. 

Again in the past people would usually leave. They would do a visa run and come back in. Again that is not overly feasible at the moment so we have been dealing with a number of these conversions. Best piece of advice is get your ducks in a row; get them in row early and often. It may not be a terrible idea to contact a legal professional, gain some insight and guidance into how best to proceed with converting from one status to the other.