Visa for our Indonesian maid

[mariaoli]

Hello, my family and I are planning to relocate with work to Bangkok from Singapore and we want to find out if it is possible to get a work permit for our Indonesian maid (32 years)who has been working with us for more than two years. Is this possible? Are there any issues/challenges that we should be aware of? and how can we get one? thanks for your help. Maria (35)

[ezzra]

Indonesia being a member of the ASIAN group of country pack, enjoy extended

visa privileges, but to be on the safe side, better consult a local lawyer

who specialize in immigrations visas, and there are many of them advertising

on Thaivisa classified section.

[gamini]

should not be a problem. A friend of mine has got permission to bring in 50,000 Sri Lankans to work here in construction as well as domestic service. I was offered a couple ( husband and wife) for about Bt16,000 a month.

Speak excellent English. Cook and Drive but they don't speak Thai which did not suite us.

[ubonjoe]

Under the normal rules it would be very hard for you to bring your maid here to work for you.

She would need to get a work permit and being a maid is one of the professions reserved for Thais. If this was worked around perhaps by calling her a nanny she would still need to work for a company to get the work permit.

Then in order to get an extension of stay from immigration she would need to be paid a minimum salary of 25K baht.

If she was Burmese, Laotian or Cambodian it would not be a problem because their are special migrant worker rules for them.

There is currently no special provisions under ASEAN that would allow her to work here.

[Mario2008]

Do a forum search. The questions arises once every few years and it should be possible. Details should be in old topics about this.

[khunPer]

Presumeably yes, just appy for a Non-B Visa and a work permit. We have a maid from Lao on work permit.

[PoorSucker]

Presumeably yes, just appy for a Non-B Visa and a work permit. We have a maid from Lao on work permit.

Burmese, Laotian or Cambodian has special status as migrant workers.

[samran]

Given she is not Burmese, Lao or Cambodian, she doesn't qualify for special permits available to them, and as a result, she is subject to onerous work permit rules of Thailand which apply to everyone, meaning the employer has to be a Thai company with sufficient paid up capital (2M Baht from memory for each work permit) and 4 Thai's employed for each work permit issued. Both these allow a work permit to be extended on a annual basis.

The other alernative is for her to do 30 day visa runs, which seems to be the choice of stay for philippine maids. But that is onerous on them. Plus they are working illegally.

The other alternative is a legal half way house where they are effectively issue a work permit for the length of their short stay (sans the onerous requirements) but still do visa runs. The forum sponsor sunbelt has written on this in the past, so you should contact them.

[Docno]

I believe the other potential complication may be on the Indonesian side. Indonesia and the Philippines only allow their citizens to work overseas as maids in certain countries and actually have 'contracts' with those countries for time-off and minimum wage for their nationals. [in Singapore, the Philippines has been more assertive which is why Filipina maids there are better paid and get more time off than their Indon counterparts].