Immigration Office Question: work permit visa extension, what time should I arrive?

[bcarrawa]

My school says they stop handing out que numbers at 6am, true? Best time to arrive?

Whats the procedure, and should I anticipate being there ALL day?

tx

[Seligne2]

This has been covered exhaustively on CM forum. Have you tried a search yet?

[RED21]

Be there at around 4am. By 5am there will already be a very long queue for those big laminated numbers. After you get one of those big laminated cards from the immigration staff you wait until the number on the card is called out and someone from the staff will ask you the reason for your visit and will give you the appropriate queue stub as well as tell you whether you wait in the morning or come back in the afternoon. Visa Extensions usually last half a day. 90 day report will probably less than an hour or two if you're early.

Basically it's queueing early to get a queue number so you can queue to get another number for another queue... .

[terminatorchiangmai]

Last week i had my employee waiting for the que at 5 am.

They started handing out the plastic ones at 6:45.

He did not get it and called me because they said i had to come in person.

I was there at 07:00AM and still got the que. This was for my Non B visa.

To bad there was an visa agent in front of me with 3 que numbers ,

i wonder how she got them ?

These agents who are paying under the table are the plague for normal working people and the reason why you have to wait so long for your turn !!

[dogeatinghotchips]

Was there on Monday for a visa extension, I got in the queue at 6am. At 7am they gave out the correct numbers (no big plastic numbers like before), from outside the building. 8.30am they began processing, but the waiting room doors were opened at 7am. I was the last one to be seen at desk 4 before lunch break, a short wait for the receipt etc meant that I was out of there by 12.30. Had I been a couple of mins later I wouldn't have been out until mid afternoon!

[northernjohn]

Are work visa extensions the same as the one year extension for retirement?

[terminatorchiangmai]

Are work visa extensions the same as the one year extension for retirement?

For work / business visa you need to have all your company papers with you x 2.

That means 2 x 300 pages stamped and signed.

[northernjohn]

Are work visa extensions the same as the one year extension for retirement?

For work / business visa you need to have all your company papers with you x 2.

That means 2 x 300 pages stamped and signed.

So you are saying they are different?

[Tywais]

Are work visa extensions the same as the one year extension for retirement?

Yes in the sense that you get a 1 year extension based on work rather than based on retirement. Difference is the type of paperwork required. For example for the university I have 3 letters I have to submit along with the regular passport photocopies and work permit photocopies. One letter is the university request to immigration to extend my permission to stay, 2nd is letter of certification of the facility I work at and the 3rd the certification of the university signed by the president.

Sounds like business extension has quite a bit more paperwork to it.

[northernjohn]

Are work visa extensions the same as the one year extension for retirement?

Yes in the sense that you get a 1 year extension based on work rather than based on retirement. Difference is the type of paperwork required. For example for the university I have 3 letters I have to submit along with the regular passport photocopies and work permit photocopies. One letter is the university request to immigration to extend my permission to stay, 2nd is letter of certification of the facility I work at and the 3rd the certification of the university signed by the president.

Sounds like business extension has quite a bit more paperwork to it.

Yes I wasn't sure. Seems like many times it is sort of lumped together. I kind of knew there had to be a difference then when one poster mentioned getting it at desk 4 I thought defiantly not the same as for the most part it is desk 5 and 6 that do the retirement.

Sounds like a bigger pain in the rear than simple retirement visa.

[Tywais]

Are work visa extensions the same as the one year extension for retirement?

Yes in the sense that you get a 1 year extension based on work rather than based on retirement. Difference is the type of paperwork required. For example for the university I have 3 letters I have to submit along with the regular passport photocopies and work permit photocopies. One letter is the university request to immigration to extend my permission to stay, 2nd is letter of certification of the facility I work at and the 3rd the certification of the university signed by the president.

Sounds like business extension has quite a bit more paperwork to it.

Yes I wasn't sure. Seems like many times it is sort of lumped together. I kind of knew there had to be a difference then when one poster mentioned getting it at desk 4 I thought defiantly not the same as for the most part it is desk 5 and 6 that do the retirement.

Sounds like a bigger pain in the rear than simple retirement visa.

I have probably done over 50 extensions since I've been here. Some due to contract time changes but most was due to CM did not have authorization to approve work extensions and had to get approval from Bangkok. That meant for several years I would get a 30 day extension waiting for approval. A couple of times, I may had to do that every 30 days for 6 months before getting the approval and then 5 months later having to start the process all over.

Even after all this time I still have a degree of panic renewing even though it is a sure thing. That is due to a couple of times the university screwed up the paper work or the paper work arrived very late, like a few days before expiration.

As for the OP, sounds like good information given on arrival times. You do need to get it done as early in the day as possible in order to get out to the labor department for the WP renewal. At least that was my experience as I went to labor one day after I got my extension and was chided about it and told they will let it go this once. This is even though I had several days before the WP expired.