suk53

Hi all,

I am seeking your help/advise. I am trying to get my head around how to get an Australian Visa for my Thai girlfriend/partner to visit me for an extended period (6-12 months).

It appears that getting an Australian visa for Thai nationals, esp. women, has become extremely difficult this year. We applied twice for a Visitor visa for her, both rejected to our surprise (the second time despite a ridiculous amount of documentation about anything under the sun). Reason for rejections was 'not satisfied that the applicant wishes to return' without elaboration (but a lot of typos).

I am not sure why the Australian embassy in Bangkok (apparently) thinks that she would work or illegally immigrate? She has absolutely no intention to work or to illegally immigrate. They are wrong with their judgment (prejudice).

Background: We are together for 6 months. She does not have an employment history in a conventional sense, however, she earned money (a lot actually) as model/actress/TV (project/freelance) work and has essentially spent the last two years mainly traveling in the US (after a long-relationship breakup; from savings). She owns a condo (but in her ex' name), a Mini, her family has three houses, two factories and two well-known Thai brands (i.e., she is most certainly not coming to Australia for economic reasons, she would not work). She has a current 10-year US visa, a 2018 Schengen visa and two prior Australian visas (like early 2000s) with no visa issues of any kind. Since February she has contracted as a fashion designer (THB 30k/m). I am a professional in Sydney (European passport but Australian permanent resident, in Sydney since 2011), good three-digit income. We had provided documentation on this with the applications.

At the moment, I am flying fortnightly for weekends to Bangkok, and we have been to EU/Asian countries over the past months, but this is just financially unsustainable (we are both in stable financial situation but not rich) – and emotionally a primarily "Skype relationship" is only so much of a replacement for, you know, actually being together.

Could you comment on our options or suggest alternatives? Any recommendation on good visa agents? Any "workarounds"? Anything else that could be done? (e.g., should we pay 150k THB to have the condo transferred to her name? should I challenge the decisions in an Australian court? it's very hard to do)\

1. Apply for Student Visa. She actually would like to take English classes, might as well do this in Australia. – I was told by an agent that chance is only 25% because many Thais apparently use such visa for work and she got rejected on a prior visa to the same destination (as above).

2. Apply for Visitor Visa – but she got rejected twice so I wouldn't think it this is a great option. The only thing is we could document more work/employment history now, and potential transfer the condo to her name.

3. Apply for New Zealand visa – we both move to Auckland, New Zealand, for some time and I fly to work in Sydney every week. (!)

4. Keep flying to Thailand until the end of the year and then apply under De-Facto-Partner conditions.

Note: I think that we cannot get married, apply for Promise-of-Marriage visa or De-Facto-Spouse visa because 1) divorce of my first marriage is still to be settled (after an unrelated 2017 separation), this will take some more months, 2) we don't want to marry because of a visa and 3) 6 months is not long enough for de facto (it needs to be 12 months). She is too old for this below 30s-Working-Visa (maybe there are other types?). I cannot work entirely remotely out of Thailand.

Thank you for any help and thoughts 

Hi,

I am coming to Thailand approximately once or twice per year... What would be great to have is a prepaid SIM card that I can pop in and the number remains as in previous years (I would like to keep the number so I do not need to give all my Thai contacts a new number each time I visit + so it can remain associated with all the messengers apps around; having the same with Europe where I use a German SIM card; my main number is Australian)...

What are the best options for prepaid Thai SIM cards if looking for 1.) cheap data (phone calls are less important) + 2.) retaining number for a year or so at least?

I used to have a contract with True Move when living in Thailand, but I do not have that anymore.

My current AIS prepaid SIM does not work anymore, apparently it is completely disabled ("No Service") after being away for 11 month.

Thank you for your help!

Daniel

We will be both in Thailand in regular intervals, so can do things on the ground.

Re-export? No, it is more straight forward "produced in Thailand > sold abroad" type of export (unless there are some re-import-tricks that would help me getting down my cost...?)

Tom: I am going to email you regarding services/portfolio.

Thank you for sharing. I am still researching on how to best go about the export business, it is quite difficult doing that remotely (as I am not living in Thailand at the moment). But I really determined to understand the process.

As Tom says, some Thai friends recommending registering an export company—in this case I would also got for the Certificate of Origin. However, there is not option of doing this online, so I would need to go to Bangkok for doing this...

In contrast, there is also this part of my Thai friends (and forum postings here and elsewhere) suggesting to just sending things as a private person, so to have less hassle. I am expecting to ship about 3 x 20 kg parcels per months. Is sending privately a realistic options?

What is difficult to find out, what actual paper work is required. What kind of forms do I need to fill out sending from Thailand to have it going through customs in Germany and Australia? Will this be different if I use the Thai Post vs. a shipping company? (can I "outsource" the paperwork to a shipping company"?)

Best wishes

p.s. Tom: I might come back to you for future products (we will be working on the next one after this launch). This time, I want to go it all by myself, simply to understand the process and to see which agent/outside services are worth paying for. As I understand, you can do company registration in Thailand? Do you also do export/shipping? If you have a website/portfolio please sent.

Hi,

Thank you both for the answers!

I tried Google first for quite some hours, but found the results quite confusing (contradicting each other), and/or rather not practical (legal text of trade agreement), and some seem to be outdate... Thaivisa would not let me post the actual links, but I had a couple of posts, including from this forum, that gave contradicting advice. For example, there were posts saying you can just post private to private, while tombkk is saying you better register a company (which seems to be reasonable, now I need to find out how to actually do that...) I will do some more research online and post a summary (and probably more questions) here.

In the meantime, if you are reading that and have and additional advice/experience/ideas/resources on how I can go about the export business — I'd be happy if you share.

Best wishes

Hi!

Nobody here exporting out of Thailand?

Any advice would be most welcome!

Best wishes

Hi,



Hoping you can help us with this... -and apologies in advance if I am asking dummy questions, I am completely new to export/import!-



We (German-Thai couple living in Australia with a long-term 457 "all business allowed" visa) would like to export clothing from Thailand to both Australia and Germany. We are producing the clothing in Thailand (our own label), so far only selling in Thailand.



Basically, what I would like to know is how a "Thailand to Australia/Germany door-to-door export-solution" could look like, especially 1) how to ship the clothing and 2) what forms/legal/pre-arrangements, customs, and fees are required for this type of export/import.



1) Who to ship with? I would think to send in 20kg parcels, but that may change (hopefully upwards ). According the figures I researched a while ago, the cheapest option for shipping is actually with the normal Thai post? Or should I go for a shipping company, say 3PL?



2) What forms (e.g., I was reading about an optional certificate of origin?) do I need? Or do I just need the form that goes with any international parcel?Do I need to register a business for doing import/export (this is for all three sides Thailand, Australian, Germany)? Do I need to pay custom fees? How can I can pay customs fees? And, as some seem to imply, is there an "inofficial" way of doing the export as an alternative to the "official" way? E.g. as marking the parcels as "gift", understating the value, or something of that sort? (I am receiving overseas "gifts" or "no value" abroad ebay purchases all the time...) If I am declaring a value: is that our costs, or the expected retail price? Do I need evidence/invoices to show the costs (and if so, in what language)? Is there an import quota from the Australian side for clothing, or is this covered by the Thailand-Australia Free Trade Agreement? How about Germany?



Even it may not sound like it, but I actually did a extensive search on the web... (the form wont let me post links here) Yet, I am not sure all the information is still current, it is somewhat contradictory. I am rather confused.



Does someone here currently have a similar export/import business, or is otherwise knowledgeable about this? Of course a step-by-step guide for newbies would be fantastic - but any help is much appreciated!



Daniel