Arkady

11 hours ago, johnjohn2 said:

Evidence of a pension. Letter of certification from a Thai bank supported by bank statements showing a pension being transferred to the pensioner’s bank account every month for at least 12 months.

 

I wonder if this means that you have to have your pension being direct deposit to the Thai Bank? Or you can just show deposits of which you transferred yourself from your bank to the Thai bank at minimum required amounts. 

I think the latter. The first category is for income from family overseas, rather than pension, in the case of those with a Thai wife (or other Thai family). They don't need to be over 50 and can receive qualifying monthly income from individuals in their home country.  The only evidence required is of the relationship with the Thai person, not the person sending the income from overseas.  If they can live with income from unknown individuals overseas for marriage extensions, my guess is that they can live with it for retirement extensions.

41 minutes ago, GarryP said:

It is my understanding that you must hold citizenship for 5 years before you are eligible to vote. 

That is in the constitution.

1 hour ago, GarryP said:

For the oath ceremony, you just repeat after an SB officer so I would not worry too much.

You get to choose between Buddhist, Christian and Muslim oaths. Sorry, if you are Hindu, Jewish, atheistic, agnostic, humanist etc. Nothing for you but I suggest taking the Buddhist oath, as being the least intrusive, since it is more of a belief set than a religion. The language is pretty incomprehensible anyway, unless you have an excellent knowledge of religious Thai. So you don't know exactly what you are committing to, except that you already know it is general loyalty to monarchy and state and pledging to be a good citizen. If bungle a passage or miss some part out, the officer will get you to repeat it until you get it right. So listen carefully.

Anyway it is an enjoyable part of the process because it indicates you are nearly done and the SB officers are in celebratory mood with copious photographs taken for their record and your Facebook page.

2 hours ago, Kinnock said:

Sorry to labor the query - but after reading the latest posts I'm still not sure.  With PR status can I just apply for an annual multiple entry permission once a year at the Immigration Office?

 

And if I don't have the multi-entry permit, I need to go to the Immigration Office before I travel?

 

If I need to do this every time I want to travel, then sounds like I don't want PR status before I stop work, as my job involves weekly trips out of Thailand?  Buit if it's just an annual process, then no big deal, as my current Non Imm requires annual trips to the One Stop Visa Centre.

 

Thanks for all the useful responses so far - just trying to understand if my current plans make sense.

I believe you can still buy the re-entry permits one by one or a couple at a time which would save money, if you only leave the country once or twice a year. Before multiple re-entries existed we used to estimate how many times we expected to leave the country in the next year and buy the appropriate number of re-entry visas for B500 each plus a couple of extras for good luck. (It was a single re-entry permit that said you could use it X number of times.) If you underestimated, you had to waste your time going back to Immigration to buy more.  I think everyone gets multi-entry re-entry permits now.  It's so much easier.

3 hours ago, VIBE said:

Thats good advice, thanks very much. Will sit with our accountant and make sure I have all the documents with me.  During the interview I did tell them that I have not left for work overseas for over 1 year, that all income was from my Thai company.  Don't think they heard / understood /or cared as they just kept on the same track.  Funny thing, after the interview one BIB talked to us outside and said I should not have said anything about working overseas, but, when they are asking me questions, I believed being 100% truthful is best, silly me.

With some people you need to be selective with the truth which doesn’t need to involve lying.

If your passport shows travel in the first two years of your three year qualifying period that cannot be explained by holidays, it would be worth producing contracts between the overseas clients and your Thai company and your contracts with the company to show that you were required to spend time overseas, if requested by the overseas clients of the firm. Thais like contracts as evidence and frankly they are not difficult to cobble together retrospectively, while Thai officials  will never willingly seek to verify something from overseas. Auditors and banks lap them up without even reading them because the legalese English is too much of a strain for them. 

In the very worse case you could just re-apply once you have washed the overseas work from your three year qualifying period.

2 hours ago, Neeranam said:

Hi VIBE, can you please confirm if your interview was with the MOI or not.

He said it was some kind of screening committee in Chiang Mai that included some officials who flew up from Bangkok. This sounds like something to compensate for the fact that the provinces that are willing to process applications do so without the expertise of a dedicated SB department, although we have not heard of it happening in other provinces. I am not sure if the next step is vetting by the narcotics people and interview with NIA before the file goes to MOI.

Anyway it is further evidence of the huge disadvantages that applicants in the provinces deal with. Either change tabien Baan to Bkk and deal with the hassles and appointments in Bkk at a moment’s notice that that involves, put up with overzealous, ignorant and possibly incompetent officials in the provinces, deal with demands for bribes reported in other provincial encounters or face flat refusal or inability to process applications that is often reported from provinces without a critical mass of foreign executives.

10 hours ago, VIBE said:

Our company is all legit as well, very good accountant to make sure of that.  They seamed to believe its a fake company, as I mentioned that I used to work as freelancer overseas.  I forgot to tell them that there are times I billed the overseas company and had my Thai company receive the income, so over the years we have had this happen so I am certain if they do investigate my company more, it will be fine.  We have income every year that we declare, and a real ongoing project so easy enough to prove.  But when in a room with them all asking different things they were kinda making up their own stories about me and my company.  It was really unpleasant.  Our company has paid up capital of 5M, and my salary was 100K per month that I paid tax on.  You would think that I am the type of person they would be ok with staying here, not scrutinize to death. Oh well, TIT.  I wore a suit and tie, and my wife said maybe I dressed to well?  Crazy.  They fail to understand that its all done, what every I did to full fill their requirements are so I can stay with my Thai wife and daughter and not have to worry every year about visas.  Or, if I fell on hard times, I would be selling product at the market, or driving grab taxi, doing what every I needed to do to feed my family.  As it is now, I am not allowed to do that.  How crazy is that?

Sounds like someone picked up on the fact you said you had been working overseas and maybe ran away with the idea that it would be possible to someone to be actually working overseas but maintain a company and WP in Thailand, as well as regularly visiting family and home base in the Kingdom. Technically there is nothing wrong with working for a Thai company and being sent on short term assignments overseas.  But if the substance of the arrangement were that the applicant was really working full time overseas, despite channeling some income back to the Thai company to support a salary and work permit, then the applicant could be regarded as not meeting the requirement to have an occupation in Thailand.  However, if you have spent most of your time in Thailand during the 3 year qualifying period, as can be verified from your passport, this should not be an issue.  Otherwise, paying tax on a salary of 100k and presumably paying a reasonable amount of corporate income tax, assuming you own shares in your own name and need to submit company tax receipts, sounds fine.  So does the company's paid-up capital, should they ever ask to see the the financial statements and have someone who is able to read them.

I think you will be fine with the MoI but, since the busybodies in CM put an unpleasant note in you file, I would bring a stack of information about the company including income tax, VAT and social security tax information, and its financial statements when you are called for interview at the MoI or with the NIA. Not bringing something because you couldn't imagine anyone would ask for it is usually a guarantee they will when dealing with the Thai bureaucracy.

2 hours ago, AndreasF said:

May I ask for advice from the more experienced expats?

I am German citizen with Thai Permanent Residence since 2012.

I am plannig to get married to a Korean citizen in Thailand and to register the marriage here.

Would my korean wife than be able to apply for a Non-O marriage visa?

 

Thank you very much!

Andreas

Your wife should also be able to apply for PR too later on, based on being married to a PR. I forget the rules for this but I remember a friend was planning to do it some years ago. If you are both PRs, any children you have in Thailand will be entitled to Thai citizenship.

2 hours ago, samran said:

FWIW, and i happily admit this is pure speculation on my behalf based on a situation which is not directly comparable...

 

When we applied for my wife’s citizenship, my income (which was the one being assessed) was based on me contracting to two seperate entities. One a BOI registered firm and one to a large multilateral. 

 

Fast forward to the MOI interview I was asked again my job to which I told them I ran my own firm and I told them what I did. Now they never asked for any more info on this but it don’t seem to concern them one bit. 

 

Different circumstances to you guys for sure but I suspect they look at you as a whole package and special branch won’t accept your application if they don’t think it has a high chance of passing muster anyway.

It is possible the reaction would have been the same, if you were applying for naturalisation for yourself with those circumstances. However, the scrutiny of a Thai husband's income and tax is not at the same level and I think only one year's income and tax history is required.

Anyway, if anyone is concerned they should ask SB Bangkok if there are any issues to do with applicants working for their own companies. I expect the answer would be that there is no regulation prohibiting it and, as long as it doesn't sound or look like a fake business, it would be fine. The people who interviewed Vibe in CM were clearly inexperienced at screening citizenship applications and may have gone into overdrive to cover themselves.  On the other hand the NIA might also look into this aspect of an applicant's background.  They normally quiz applicants about their marriages to Thai spouses to sniff out fake marriages, so this would be just an extension of that process.  If the Thai spouse owns shares in the employer company, that would be a natural lead in to questions regarding the genuineness of the business.

2 hours ago, onthemoon said:

That's disturbing. I have been working for my own company for 10 years, paid-up capital is more than 2 but less than 5 million. Should this cause me to get worried, or has this internal regulation been scrapped?

 

Also, with regards to your last paragraph, I thought we have to work for the same company for at least 3 (or was it 5) years?

You just need to have been working continuously with back to back WPs for 3 years. It doesn't have to be for the same company.

 The 5 million paid-up capital was not to do with citizenship. It was an internal regulation of Immigration for PR screening to weed out applicants working for potentially fake companies (along with many from real companies but that's life in Thailand). Immigration reasoned that 2 million was (and still is) the minimum capital for a WP and that fake companies would not be likely to have any more capital than the minimum, which is no doubt true but many genuine companies also have only 2 million or 1 million, if they don't need WPs. There has never been any suggestion that SB or the MoI operate the same internal regulation for citizenship.  I mentioned it to illustrate the type of suspicion that the company might exist purely to obtain visas, work permits and ultimately citizenship, that can arise when an applicant is working for his own family owned business. That was clearly the thought process during Vibe's interview when they started on a nasty tack after his wife mentioned the hassles of getting visas and WPs as a reason for his citizenship application. Immigration sees loads of these foreigner scams to get visas and seems to be a lot more suspicious than SB which has hardly any contact with foreigners with the exception of this one tiny department.

So I wouldn't worry unduly about this. Just be aware that a small business might be subject to scrutiny.  Also, if you have the chance to either increase paid-up capital or move to a larger company before applying, it would be worth considering.

Frankly I doubt that there is any internal regulation of this type in respect of citizenship applications. Nevertheless, suspicions of applicants working for small companies are likely to arise. However, I think that SB would look closely at the tax paid by the employer to see if it is a real business.  In addition, if the applicant holds any shares in his own name, he has to submit the company's accounts. I don't suppose SB is very adept at reading financial statements but they should be able to figure out what a company's revenues and earnings are.

The reaction of the CM committee to Vibe working for his own family SME business reminds me of my introduction to a senior Immigration official after I had been told my PR application would be rejected because I worked for a representative office which was effectively a branch of an overseas company which could not earn income or pay tax in Thailand.  The official, who was a Police Major General, told me I was being blocked by an internal Immigration guideline that was not fixed in law and he was able to override it for me with his personal recommendation which he did.  He also showed me a stack of applications, the photos on some of which I recognised, that were being rejected out of hand due to a similar unpublished Immigration guideline to bin all applications from people working for companies with less than 5 million baht paid up capital.  Since the the policy was not supported by any law or regulation and was just internally fabricated nastiness, he told me that the applicants couldn't be told the real reason for their rejections and many re-applied with the same result.  He said that there were too many fake companies set up by foreigners for the purpose of getting visas and it just made Immigration's work easier to reject applicants from 2 million baht companies out of hand, without having to check that they were real businesses and get involved in acrimonious disputes.  Of course, if this had been made public the scammers would have upped the ante by raising their paid up capitals to 5 million baht but few people knew about this internal rule and I can't say, if it is still in force today. 

I was actually in Vibe's situation working for my own company as the only employee a year before I applied for citizenship.  It was my experience at Immigration that influenced me to accept an offer to work for a large Thai plc before I applied which effectively washed the small company off the radar.  I have often wondered whether things would have worked out smoothly, if I had applied from the small company.  It is not surprising that some officials might suspect that someone might have just set up a small company to get visas and ultimately apply for citizenship.  It seems that there are also a lot of fake marriages out there for the same reasons.

On 12/27/2018 at 6:28 PM, skippybangkok said:

Gave my Thai ID to a bank clerk the other day to open an account for LTF, she asked me what nationality I was..... Lol


Sent from my iPad using Thaivisa Connect

I've had that one many times now.  At first I got irritated and just said I was Thai.  Now I have become a bit more tolerant and say that I am Thai but was born British.  Imagine the fuss in the UK, if Brits with brown or yellow faces were asked what nationality they were in banks or similar.

Most likely this was not his own truck and the owner probably had no interest in replacing worn out tyres.  Re-treads for trucks are common in Thailand too, as evidenced by the large number of shed re-treads seen on expressways.

On 12/24/2018 at 8:35 PM, VIBE said:

Yes, think so.  It was at city hall.  Told it starts at 13:30 so be there one hour before.  Me, wife and my 11 month old showed up at 12 noon.  We sat outside on some not so comfy chairs until 5pm with only a little water.  Me in a suit, sweating balls.  There was over 15 people, all getting called one at a time.  They started late, like after 2pm or something, and the first took 30 mins, then, they realized they need to pick up the pace, and some took as little as 5 mins, others 15min.  When we finally did get called, first thing they asked was for me to sing, caught me off guard.  Ok, I will sing.  After they asked me do I know what it means?  Wanted me to explain the anthem in Thai, which I tried to do for some lines, very poorly.  And from there it all went down hill.  45mins of them asking questions like when was the last time I was at immigration, like that is meaningfull?  Then questions about my engineering degree, so I explained what I used to do for work over seas, and that opened up the pandoras box as they started to question my Thai company and the tax I paid and what not.  Eventually one side of the room that was the police were arguing for us against the other side of bureaucrats.  When asked why I wanted to become Thai, I said to stay with my family, as I held my baby.  My wife explained that when I get my visa every year, it takes 2 months and I need to be back on that exact day to pick it up, and she said I loose out on work overseas because of that.  They somehow turned that to a negative, saying oh I want to be Thai just cause of my visa.  Then saying things like if they approve me then any one can just open up a Thai company and pay tax and become Thai.  Do they not know that paying tax is just ONE of the 18 requirements that I had to fulfill?  And my Thai company actually does business, so its not a shelf company that we had to keep telling them.  Finally, one of the head police said its not their duty do investigate my earnings, but to see if I fulfilled the requirements.  One asked if I have a WP, I passed it to her, and she wanted to know what salary I was getting that I was paying tax on?  100K per month, then she put it down and made a jester to say thats more then enough, which, based on marriage the min is 40K.

 

In the end they approved us, but said will add comments that I need to clarify more about my income.  Crazy.  I just don't fit in their boxes of one person only working for one company.  I have a few different ventures on the go, as do most people, this I don't view as a negative, but they did for some reason.  

 

It was really a horrible experience, and my little girl was good all afternoon then started to act up once in the room.  I and my wife, and my baby were exhausted by the time we got in there, and to be hit with so much negativity and lack of sense really took a lot out of me.  On the drive home I really could not care if I got it or not, I was that broken down.  You do everything they ask for, and its like you get penalized for it.....:(

This sounds a really dreadful experience and nothing like anything that ever happens to those who apply in Bkk. It sounds as they are assembling a group of people from various agencies to screen applications before they go to Bkk.  Perhaps this is because the provincial SBs don't have dedicated departments to do the screening like in Bkk and can't be relied on to do a decent job. But this sounds complete overkill by officials who don't really understand what their role in the process is and prefer to make things up on the fly.

Although I was never asked why I wanted to become Thai, this does get asked quite often and they tend be rather picky about the answers. SB in Bkk in the past have advised applicants to say forcefully that they intend to live the rest of their lives in Thailand, feel a great affiliation with the country and its people, and  would like to enjoy all the rights (as well as perform the obligations) of being a Thai citizen as the main reason. They seem to get uppity for some reason when someone implies it is solely for the convenience of not having to get visas and WPs or to be able to own their own business or land, although these are the most obvious benefits.

It is a bit of a curved ball but still in the bounds of acceptability to ask someone who has to sing to explain the meaning of what he has just sang.  But asking someone to sing, who by law is not required to sing, and then asking to explain the meaning is taking curved balls to an absurd and seemingly vindictive level. 

On 12/25/2018 at 7:55 PM, samran said:

Interesting as always to see what is happening.

 

Something I’ve never seen before - in November 10 people requesting renunciation of this nationality.

 

All were Singaporean, Japanese and there was one German, renouncing under section 14, which allows dual national children to renounce their citizenship in a period of one year following their 20th birthday. I know Japan and Singapore were quite strict in not allowing dual nationality, but thought Germany was more liberal. 

Germany is not exactly liberal in this respect. I was born there to non-German parents in the days when most countries gave citizenship to all born there. But not Germany. Germans applying for another nationality need to obtain approval from the German Foreign Ministry to keep their German nationality before they apply or it will be revoked, if they are found out. They need to have a good reason, e.g. need to own land or company, and need to prove they retain lasting ties with Germany. I am not sure what the rules are for half Germans. I know a German with a Singaporean wife and half half children who have managed to conceal their German nationalities from Singapore and vice versa but it sounds like a walking a tight rope, as they might lose either or both one day.

50 minutes ago, JackThompson said:

Thus far, those caught red-handed in co-working spaces doing exactly this have not been prosecuted, once it was discovered they were paying the company that owned the space - not "being paid" by the company that owned the space.  Granted, that could change - but seems rather unlikely.

 

Taxation is another issue, though.

 

I agree with this - though many don't, and are not bothered.  

 

But, in general, it seems a bit crazy to be require a "work permit" for people "transmitting" work done in their head via international telecommunications systems - when this could be done anywhere, including on a plane flying across international boundaries - when there is no business/company-interaction occurring in the country.

If people were not prosecuted for working in rented office space, I guess whoever caught them decided to treat the cases like someone renting a quiet space to use a computer in, since they lacked evidence of work. If they were more aggressive, they might have wanted to go through their laptops looking for evidence of work but they might have found enough low hanging fruit that day. 

There is not much consistency in the way these types of cases are pursued in Thailand by different authorities. Another old chestnut is the case of foreign musicians getting arrested for jamming in bars. Many foreign musos were arrested over the years and most chose to plead guilty and pay fines. However one guy in Chiang Mai took his chances and plead not guilty. He was acquitted by the judge who said jamming in a bar was no different from singing in a karaoke parlor and didn’t require a work permit. The legal precedent didn’t stop police from harassing foreign jammers in bars even in Chiang Mai. Since most are willing to plead guilty and pay fines, it seems they are justified.

in the case at hand, I think a judge would only convict, if there was evidence that someone was operating a full blown free lance business from Thailand, rather than just keeping in touch with business during short holidays. However, this is very subjective and, even if you eventually get acquitted, you will have suffered a great deal of agro from police up until that point.

8 hours ago, GarryP said:

That is disconcerting. What would have happened if you had simply said no you couldn't?  Could it have any impact on your application? Not everyone could think of a good reason not to sing it off the cuff. "I did not learn it because it is not a requirement", does not sound good coming from someone applying for Thai citizenship, although that is really the case with many of us.   

I think Sally's response was a good one and I agree there are many Thais who could not manage to pass the test singing the NA and RA unaccompanied. However, I doubt it would count against your application, if you were applying on the basis of marriage and said you couldn't sing the NA at all, since it is not required. Same with reading and writing Thai.  I think they may just try to come up with different questions to make it less boring for themselves.  They may also want to see applicants' attitude to Thai culture in their responses.

Another curved ball I heard of re singing was a female applicant applying on the basis of PR who was asked to tell the room what feelings the RA invoked in her after she had sung it. The poor thing was already a wreck because she was no  singer and they had made her sing it 3 or 4 times, while her spoken Thai was way short of being able to articulate something so abstract. Anyway what she was feeling was obviously extreme anxiety and exasperation at having to repeat it several times, with no disrespect intended of course.  Nevertheless, I believe she is now a Thai citizen. Having to sing the songs is definitely a worthy challenge which invokes feelings of great relief when you have finished and a sense of really earning your  citizenship that is recommended to all.