Smart Visa Talent type

[DjChris28]

Hello,

 

So I had to leave Thailand due to Covid earlier last year, but once covid is eliminated I'm looking to move back to Thailand and work there again.

 

Despite being high skilled, it's hard for me to get work in Thailand due to differences in what I get paid back home and the employer in Thailand being confident enough I'm not a flight risk..

 

I'm currently working for a company in Australia as a software engineer who have offices in Singapore as well. They are really keen to try and get people as permanent employees and say it's hard to find talent in the software engineering space. At the end of the year when hopefully international travel is on the cards going to make them a deal. They are pretty remote friendly, we have software engineers all working around Australia remotely and some of our developers are in Singapore and during my induction mentioned that they let some guy work remotely because he wanted to do it for lifestyles reasons.

 

I've been looking at the Smart talent visa and I think I might actually be eligible. I well and truly earn over 100,000 baht per month, I write software which I believe falls under the "digital" industry type. There's one part I don't get, it says this:

"Having an employment or service contract with an entity in Thailand or overseas with an assignment to work in Thailand". - Does this mean my employer must state a specific reason why I must work in thailand? Assuming the company are OK with me working remotely from Thailand, Do I just need to get a letter from the employer to state my salary, the work I do, my employment being permanent and that they are ok for me to do the work from Thailand remotely?

 

The other option is I ask to relocate to Singapore and get a work permit for Singapore, work in Singapore and then travel to Thailand on a long weekend or negotiate with the employer to give me a monday off work once a month so I can have a long weekend in thailand, but because i'm likely to do this once a month or so, i'll probably need to get a METV or elite visa as my entry into thailand will be like one weekend every 2-3 weeks. Will there be an issue getting both an elite visa plus also a singapore work visa at the same time? This is only to avoid immigration frowning at me for travelling to Thailand once a month for a weekend.

[VyacheslavKHV]

I think getting sponsored work permit would be more simple. I know companies who can take you in, give you NON-B and work permit for reasonable price. After that you can stay here or travel wherever you like.

[Salerno]

14 minutes ago, DjChris28 said:

Does this mean my employer must state a specific reason why I must work in thailand?

 

Can't say I've looked into it but as I understand it, what you quoted is basically saying you need to be working for a Thai/Thai based company OR an external company that requires you to work in Thailand (e.g. working on a project for one of their clients that is Thai based, not just because you personally want to be Thai based and your employer is OK with you working remotely).

 

Personally I think being SG based is probably your easiest path (guessing you're too young to go for the usual long-term stay visa) that would cause the least problems. As to visa, just turn up visa exempt until/if an IO gets <deleted>ty then think about options. That being based on when quarantine is history obviously.