Change Of Visa And Permanent Residency

[rkbauer]

Hello,

If I were to change my visa type, would any extensions gained prior count toward permanent residency? Would it still be the same visa, just changed?

Thanks.

[samran]

what visa are you proposing changing from and to? Additionally, do you have ongoing tax payments?

[Mario2008]

Per above.

The criteria is continously living in Thailand on a non-immigrant visa, but you will also need to look at other factors such as employement and paying tax.

[PoorSucker]

Visa type does not matter only yearly extensions of stay.

So if you change the reason from employment to marriage, you're OK.

[lopburi3]

Normally you would only change reason for extension of stay - but if you actually have to obtain a visa and thus new entry the three year period would start again AFAIK. It is not clear what you are asking.

[rkbauer]

I'll elaborate a bit.

I'm a student at a Thai University with an ED Visa. I also have a condo purchased for 10Mbht+, so can change to an investor visa if I wish.

I understand that I need a work permit and tax return for PR. I cannot be employed on an ED visa though, as I understand. I assume that I cannot apply for PR as an investor, in my situation.

Would there be a point in switching my visa category to get a work permit? If I could and still have my extensions, I may be able to apply a year earlier, due to timing the visa/extensions with the Dec. application date, because currently, I apply for my extensions in November.

[samran]

I'll elaborate a bit.

I'm a student at a Thai University with an ED Visa. I also have a condo purchased for 10Mbht+, so can change to an investor visa if I wish.

I understand that I need a work permit and tax return for PR. I cannot be employed on an ED visa though, as I understand. I assume that I cannot apply for PR as an investor, in my situation.

Would there be a point in switching my visa category to get a work permit? If I could and still have my extensions, I may be able to apply a year earlier, due to timing the visa/extensions with the Dec. application date, because currently, I apply for my extensions in November.

You'll certainly need to have 3 years of consective extensions, but AFAIK, you'll also need three years of tax returns and work permit to back those tax returns up. So you can't apply till you have those things.

[Dork]

Unfortunately I think Samran is right. 3 years tax receipts are a prerequisite and if you're not married to a Thai citizen the tax paid needs to be reasonably substantial. I vaguely recall reading of occasional exceptions such as for Buddhist monks but other than that, I think the tax requirement is not flexible. In practise that means having a work permit too.

The investor category is a bit of a mystery to me. In the year I applied, I could have qualified for that according to the regulations. But I was strongly advised not to by the PR section at immigration. They told me that the investment itself would come under close scrutiny and if it wasn't producing adequate returns and therefore generating taxes I would be rejected. I've never heard of a successful candidate under this category. Of course, that doesn't mean there aren't any.

[asiaexpat]

William Heinecke did it in 1991, but that was another era.

[ubonjoe]

Required documents for PR based upon Investment as listed on immigration website includes having a work permit and no mention of condo ownership.

[Arkady]

Doesn't matter what type of visa you have, as long as it is one that allows you to work. As far as I know that includes NON-Imm B, marriage and investment visas, extensions or whatever they call them but not Ed or retirement. There are PR application categories for investment and having a Thai dependents or being the dependent of a Thai but when you look at the other requirements you find that all of these require you to have had a WP for at least three years and submit 3 years' salaries tax receipts. I think the minimum salary is also B80k for all categories. Some people have reported that by applying in the dependent category they could pool their salary with their Thai wife's to get to 80k but Immigration would probably see such applications as scraping the barrel and not take them seriously. A Pol Maj Gen at Immigration once explained to me that Immigration felt the guidelines set by the MoI set the bar too low, so they set their own internal guidelines that did things like eliminate all the applicants working for B 2 million companies which they regarded as Micky Mouse and possibly fake businesses. Because these were only internal guidelines they were not allowed to give applicants the real reason for their rejections.

Since you need to submit three years' of notarised tax receipts and applications open only in December for a couple of weeks, you effectively need to have been working for at least 4 years before you can apply because you can't get your notarised tax receipt for the prior year before mid January by which time applications are closed. The last batch of approvals took 5-6 years to process.

[Arkady]

William Heinecke did it in 1991, but that was another era.

I think Heinecke did it long before that. That might have been the year he became a Thai citizen.

At one point PR was the only business visa you could get that lasted more than 3 months and many people applied to avoid the hassle of 3 monthly renewals even though they didn't intend to stay permanently.