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ResourcesVisa & Immigration LawThailand Immigration LawWhat Is a "Sponsored Work Permit" for Immigration to Thailand?

What Is a "Sponsored Work Permit" for Immigration to Thailand?

Transcript of the above video:

The topic of this video today is this notion of a "Sponsored Work Permit". I have had some inquiries; I have had some folks ask me about this; clients have asked me about this and I have seen this term used a bit online here recently, this notion of a "sponsored work permit".  

Again this is sort of a euphemism, it has sort of been made up in the last few weeks but what does it mean? Well basically, people know that the top category, one of the highest prioritized Non-immigrant Visa categories for Thailand involves work authorization specifically Work Permit issuance or pre-authorization, WP3, associated with work authorization. 

I have seen a lot of folks discussing the notion of a "sponsored work permit" in the context of trying to enter Thailand, specifically to obtain a Certificate of Entry to Thailand, and thereby coordinate their admission to Thailand, quarantine and released therefrom. So what is it? Well in essence what it sounds like to me in the few places I have seen that have sort of been touting this, it appears to be a situation where some Company offers to sponsor you for a Work Permit but it looks to me like and I am not saying that obviously this is the way folks are coming into Thailand in work authorization status, but there appear to be some who are out there flogging the ability to sponsor people for Work Permits. There are some fine lines when you are dealing with Immigration, when you are dealing with the legal profession, when you are dealing with the law specifically, there are fine lines out there and some of those fine lines, you know trying to figure out when you crossed it can be a bit difficult. What I would look at with respect to this, if this a sponsored work permit that is not genuine, you are not actually going to use the work permit, you are not actually coming into a Company that you have any part of, you have any activity with, then you really need to be careful about this because it could be deemed to be fraudulent. You could have even presumably, although this is a bit of a logical stretch, but I could see fact patterns where this could fit, you could be sort of deemed to be sort of trafficked. You could have situations where you simply are viewed as circumventing the Immigration law or engaging again in some form of fraud, so be very careful with this notion. 

Again if you are looking to come to Thailand to work, there are ways to do that. There are perfectly legal ways of doing that. If you are looking to come to Thailand to do business, there are perfectly legal ways of doing that and gaining admission to the Kingdom but this notion of doing it via subterfuge, doing things in sort of a pretextual or even a pretensive manner, that is not a good course of action to follow. For this reason, it is a good idea in my opinion to contact a legal professional in order to gain some insight and guidance in to how best to proceed in obtaining lawful proper admission to the Kingdom of Thailand.