Retirement/ Student/ Work Visas.......help

[resrea]

Before I start I will be very grateful for ANY help as I feel I am sinking in quicksand!

I am 40 and my husband in 55 we are English but have been living in Australia where our two small children were born (6 years old and 17 months) and they hold Australian passports.

About two months ago we came over to Vietnam and have been here in Saigon visiting family and travelling. I took the TEFL course here with a view to teaching in Thailand or Vietnam.

We plan to move to Chiang Mai and hopefully live there, educate our children and I would like to teach English. I also have a law degree (please do not hold this against me, I am very nice).

The problem is finding the best way to do this (if it is even possible) I visited the Thai consulate here in Saigon today and she said that I should get a letter from a school and apply for a Non-Immigration "ED" Visa for both the children (even though one isn't even school age) and then apply for an "O" visa for us both. She said this would be the easiest and that I should do this here as I cannot do it once I am in Thailand. I suppose this would be possible to contact schools we haven't even seen and pick one and hope they can help but we imagined that we would come over on a tourist visa, look around and find out all that we could once we were in the country and then apply for the appropriate visa with the benefit of local knowledge and contacts.

We also had never considered the "ED" visa and the "O" visa as we had thought that the only way we could stay in the country was if my husband applied for a retirement visa. Again we thought we could do this once we were in the country after entering on a tourist visa.

We also have another concern about what type of visas myself and the children would get if my husband was successful in getting a retirement visa, are we his dependants and entitled to stay too? Could I still work.....all these questions and more.

Someone else wrote that the more information they find out the more confused they get and I certainly agree, I have been trawling these forums for weeks and do not seem to be any the wiser.

Could anyone offer any advice to which would be the best and or easiest visas to get and when and where to get them. Thanks in advance and for reading this extrordinarily long post!

resrea

[Sunbelt Asia]

Before I start I will be very grateful for ANY help as I feel I am sinking in quicksand!

I am 40 and my husband in 55 we are English but have been living in Australia where our two small children were born (6 years old and 17 months) and they hold Australian passports.

About two months ago we came over to Vietnam and have been here in Saigon visiting family and travelling. I took the TEFL course here with a view to teaching in Thailand or Vietnam.

We plan to move to Chiang Mai and hopefully live there, educate our children and I would like to teach English. I also have a law degree (please do not hold this against me, I am very nice).

The problem is finding the best way to do this (if it is even possible) I visited the Thai consulate here in Saigon today and she said that I should get a letter from a school and apply for a Non-Immigration "ED" Visa for both the children (even though one isn't even school age) and then apply for an "O" visa for us both. She said this would be the easiest and that I should do this here as I cannot do it once I am in Thailand. I suppose this would be possible to contact schools we haven't even seen and pick one and hope they can help but we imagined that we would come over on a tourist visa, look around and find out all that we could once we were in the country and then apply for the appropriate visa with the benefit of local knowledge and contacts.

We also had never considered the "ED" visa and the "O" visa as we had thought that the only way we could stay in the country was if my husband applied for a retirement visa. Again we thought we could do this once we were in the country after entering on a tourist visa.

We also have another concern about what type of visas myself and the children would get if my husband was successful in getting a retirement visa, are we his dependants and entitled to stay too? Could I still work.....all these questions and more.

Someone else wrote that the more information they find out the more confused they get and I certainly agree, I have been trawling these forums for weeks and do not seem to be any the wiser.

Could anyone offer any advice to which would be the best and or easiest visas to get and when and where to get them. Thanks in advance and for reading this extrordinarily long post!

resrea

You could not get a work permit with being a dependent on the extension of stay being an guardian for your children while they go to school. You also could not get a work permit being an dependent based on being married to a man who has a retirement visa.

With the dependent based on retirement, you do not need to put up any money or show a pension like your husband.

With the dependent of your children. You need to show 500K in a Thai bank acct for three months.

www.sunbeltasiagroup.com

[lopburi3]

I suspect the best long term approach would be for husband to persue the retirement option with the children as dependents on his extensions of stay and you to obtain job offer/non immigrant B visa and extensions on employment if you can. I believe for teaching you will require a police clearance (from Oz) but this again seems subject to various interpretations. If you can talk the Consulate into non immigrant for husband to check on retirement it will be a help but in fact you can all arrive on tourist visas and then make your decisions later. If might require a trip to Vientiane or other Consulate at some point however. And your employment, if it does not allow extensions of stay, would require such trips every 90 days. You might want to talk with Sunbelt after you are here a bit for specific guidence as your situation is rather unusual (school/teach/retire/children).

[resrea]

Thanks so much for the help - I guess we will do as we had originally planned and go ahead on a tourist visa and sort it out from there in Thailand. Just wanted to double check that Sunbelt would be a legitimate place to go and do they have offices/contact in Chiang Mai?

Thanks again for the time and help

resrea

[ProThaiExpat]

No wonder your confused!! You are approaching the problem in your OP from any angles and there are many answers.

As lopburi3 said, if you enter Thailand on tourist visas and your husband then obtains a non-imm-O at Thai Immigration, you and the children would have long stay privileges as his dependents.

Then, you would have time to explore employment opportunities and if offered a job, the employer could well take care of obtaining a change of your visa status and work permit as part of their offer. Thus keeping the horse before the cart so to speak.

Your last post reflects the right approach in my view.

[resrea]

Yes - it's amazing how confusing it can be especially with all the ambiguities of a particular country (and offices too, it seems from the posts I have read).

I have read that once you have money in a Thai bank account (for the requirements of the retirement visa for example) then it is next to impossible to remove that money - is this true and is there any reason we should be cautious about the amount of money we bring into Thailand and/or deposit into a Thai bank ? - as this is what we had planned to do.

We read a post which made us a bit nervous about doing this, saying "don't take more money into Thailand than you can afford to leave behind" and that sounds very ominous indeed.

Any guidance would be much appreciated.

Regards,

resrea

Edited July 8, 2007 by resrea

[lopburi3]

There is no problem at all using money in an account. You can put 800k into account for three months - obtain retirement extension - and spend it the next day. Or better use it for your living expenses for nine months and then top up again. A normal savings account will have an ATM card that can be used anywhere, anytime to obtain up to 150,000 baht or more a day if you so want. Even the lowest normal limit would be 50,000 baht per day. Compare that with many US banks limits of a couple hundred dollars. Not sure of the UK limits.

[ProThaiExpat]

My take on your last post was you were concerned that if you moved on from Thailand, would you have difficulty getting your money out of Thailand.

As long as you have evidence that you brought the money into Thailand, I believe there is no problem taking that amount out. As lopburi3 points out, your ATM card with a Visa logo can be used anywhere in the world and I had no difficulty withdrawing funds overseas via ATM. I am sure that you can likewise make arrangements with your local bank before you leave to set up a procedure where you can wire transfer funds to an overseas bank

[Sunbelt Asia]

Just wanted to double check that Sunbelt would be a legitimate place to go and do they have offices/contact in Chiang Mai?

Yes we have a office in Chiang Mai. The tel # is 053-283-845

www.sunbeltasiagroup.com

[resrea]

Hi,

Firstly, thanks to all who have been generous enough to have taken the time to

advise me on the various issues at hand - it's much appreciated.

Needless to say I have a couple more questions before we finalize our travel plans

and wing our way to Chiang Mai:

Firstly - Is it worth us asking for a double-entry tourist visa, or might that be a

little bit ambitious ?

and - Secondly: Do we need return/onward tickets ? - and if we do would it be

better, considering we really have no particular reason to return here to Ho Chi

Minh City, to buy 'open jaw' tickets which would take us to another city, closer

to Chiang Mai which might be more 'Thai visa friendly' etc: ?

Thanks again and kind regards,

resrea.

[lopburi3]

Nothing lost in asking. And there is no requirement for return tickets by Thailand Immigration but there might be at the Embassy you are using. Suspect an onward ticket to Vientiane would be enough if they require something.