Hi all,

A bit of an arcane question for the experts out there. Recall reading somewhere on TV that the requirements for work permits for PR's have changed slightly recently. Can someone give me an update of what is required these days with respect to:

- Thai's employed for a WP to be issued

- Paid up working capital

- How long WP is granted for.

- Anything else I may have missed.

Many thanks in advance.

Hi Samran,

I'm certainly no expert and only a recent PR but my experiences so far would indicate that as far as the Labour department is concerned, there is no difference or advantage in having PR when applying for a work permit. The capital & foreign/Thai employee ratio requirements are exactly the same. Whether there is some kind of unofficial leniency shown to PR's I can't say. But I haven't experienced that.

For a small company though, where the PR is the only foreigner employed there is a key difference in that Immigration is not involved. From my experience Immigration are less flexible in their requirements before approving an extension than the Labour department is in issuing the WP. So not having to deal with them is an obvious advantage.

For a company with more than one WP holder where at least one of them doesn't have PR then I don't see any advantage at all because if Immigration knows that there is another WP holder (that has PR) they will enforce e.g. the 4/1 ratio inclusive of that PR before approving the extension for the non-PR.

Apparently the previous government sneaked through a change to the regulations for work permits in 2010 or early 2011..

They eliminated all the special considerations for those on PR.

And apparently also made it so that a person married to a Thai needs the same number of Thai employees as all others.

I have never seen a translation to English or even a posting of these new regulations in Thai.