In light of recent events, I think it's finally time to do that post we've been mentioning for ages - i.e. how to become legal in Thailand. Warning: this isn't meant to be entertaining! Skip this one if you prefer the anecdotes. This is just meant to help clarify the process to those who have found our intermittent updates confusing.
[Sidebar from A: And if our blog ever becomes famous then maybe people living and/or working in Thailand can use this as the guide that we never had (unless everything changes in a year, which it probably will).]
1. The Tourist Visa.
- You can technically just enter Thailand by air and get a free 30 days in the country, but that's typically not long enough to leave enough time for finding a job and getting the paperwork done for your new visa. In reality, it's smarter to apply in your home country for a 2 month tourist visa. Luckily, one of 3 Thai embassies in the US is located in LA (the others are Washington D.C. and Chicago), so that's where we got ours.
Time commitment: Next day processing.
Cost: $40 (1192 b)
2. Non-immigrant B Visa Paperwork.
- After securing a stable and well-paying job (this part was a breeeeeeeeeze, of course), your respectable business should get a start on your non-immigrant B visa paperwork. Honestly, I have no idea what it entails, but it all seems very complicated and, to my understanding, often falsified. The whole process takes anywhere from a week to months, and you just kind of have to hope it's happening and being done for you. The paperwork has to be dated for the day you plan to get your visa and addressed to the embassy you're planning to visit (in our case, Vientiane, Laos). After receiving this, you need a couple hundred photos (okay, like 6) and several copies of everything you have that proves you're human and American and a graduate of some sort of school.
Time commitment: Anywhere from 1 week to...months.
Cost: None, unless you have to bribe someone to do it all faster.
3. Trip to Laos.
- Unless you're really good at navigating the Thai/Lao bus system and want to save about 200 baht, it's best to stop in at any number of small tour agencies and book a "VIP bus" to Laos (see previous posts about Laos, where this experience was described in painful detail). You'll need to also buy a Lao visa upon entry (good for 30 days, but only used for 2, typs). The first day, you submit your paperwork and hope that your school didn't forget anything, in which case you would have to go all the way back to Thailand and start again (whiiich happened to the guy in front of us). You pick it up the next afternoon and head back to Thailand.
Time commitment: 2 days/3 nights (not including the day of your return, which is lost due to sleep deprivation)
Cost: Bus (1900b) + Lao visa ($35/1043b) + hotel (500b) = 3443
4. Non-Immigrant B Visa.
- You can choose between a single entry and multiple entry visa. Before going through the process, it was almost impossible to know which one we were supposed to get. So we guessed, went for the cheaper one, and hoped fervently that we weren't wrong and wouldn't have to return to Laos. As it turns out (we think) they end up having the same cost/effect, but with drastically different mechanisms of operation. With a single entry visa, after entering Thailand from Laos you have 90 days to complete your paperwork or you must leave, and your visa will be cancelled. After getting your work permit, your single-entry visa can then be extended to a full year. However, leaving the country at this point will void both your visa and work permit, so you have to get a re-entry permit (see below). With a multiple entry visa, upon entering Thailand you again have 90 days to figure out your paperwork. However, if you leave the country during this time, you may do so and then return without cancelling the visa. You can do this 3 times, which essentially makes this a year-long visa wherin you must leave the country every 90 days.
Time commitment: Next day processing.
Cost: Single entry (2000b) or Multiple entry (5000b)
4a. Visa Pages.
- At this point, becoming legal had eaten up about 5 of my passport pages, and I had a total of 0 left. If you think using up all your visa pages sounds ridiculous, in southeast Asia it's really easy. A combination of poorly-placed stamps and unnecessary visas will do the trick pretty quickly. Additional pages used to be free, but alas, no longer. Annoyingly enough, the US consulate only has appointments to add pages on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and as these tend to fill up weeks in advance, this can really put a spanner in the works for a while.
Time commitment: 2 hours
Cost: $82 (2444) :[
5. Work Permit Paperwork.
- After getting your non-immigrant B visa, you have 90 days to get your work permit paperwork in order, receive your work permit, and then extend your visa. Again, various Thai documents are procured from some official location, and that tends to take a couple weeks. You will also need to go to the hospital and get a syphilis test and be told, in writing, that you're not dying.
Time commitment: About a month of waiting (paperwork); 2 hours (hospital tests)
Cost: Syphilis test (320b)
6. Work Permit.
Paperwork and 1,000 more photos and copies in hand, you need to head to the labour department, get very lost, and eventually submit your paperwork for a work permit. You can pick it up 7 business days later.
Time commitment: 7 business days
Cost: 3000b
7. Non-immigrant B Visa extension.
- This is where the fun starts: in the Immigration department. Basically, a very very tiny crowded building with lots of queue signs with red numbers that don't seem to correspond to anything. Our first trip, we spent a while wandering around and going inside and out trying to find somewhere to get a number. Eventually we just asked for help at the front desk, but we were told it was too late to be helped (it was 2pm; the place closes at 4pm) and we would have to come back the next day. A week later, we came at 1pm. We should mention that on weekdays we could only go after work and Immigration is closed on weekends, so we were lucky that school had ended early this day. Again too late, but we managed to plead our case and get a quick appointment. Boom! Visa extended to one year!
Time commitment: 2 hours (if we had done it right, 5)
Cost: 1,900b
8. Re-Entry Permit
- When it came time to head to Vietnam, we had to get a re-entry permit so that leaving the country wouldn't void both our precious visa and work permit. Unfortunately, back to the immigration department. This time, we headed there at 9am (it opens at 8am), heeding the warnings that we were too late to be served last time. We were laughed away and told to come earlier the next day. Bewildered, I went home to do some more extensive research on the Thai expat forums, as the Thai immigration site itself is completely unhelpful. Apparently, if you want any hope of being served, you need to arrive between 6 and 7am. Unexpected. The next day, we arrived at 6:30, received a paper number (later determined to be useless), waited until 8 when the doors opened, received a printed paper number, waited for that number to be called and received a plastic number, and then waited until that number was called. Once called, we handed in our forms and more pictures and copies and waited another 2 hours. Finally, we had a stamp in our passports saying we could leave the country and return.
Note: You can get a single re-entry permit, good for one re-entry, or a multiple re-entry permit, good for the entirety of your visa's validity. (1000/3800b). So it's a gamble - if you think you'll leave the country 4 times on your visa, it's worth it. If not...you're stuck doing this process every time you want to leave, but you might pay less.
Time commitment: In theory, 5 hours.
Cost: 1000b
9. - until you leave the country for reals. 90 day check-ins.
- If you don't want to get deported, you have two choices - either leave the country every 90 days (after getting the appropriate permit), or check in at immigration every 90 days. The timing has been right, so we have yet to need to worry about this. We'll let you know in...50 days. It's going to be fun!
Time commitment: 5 hours/1+ days every 90 days
Cost: None/re-entry permit (1000b) + trip away (at bare minimum, 1000b) = 2,000b
Time span: 6-9 months and then every 90 days
Absolute minimum number of days on which you must miss some work (if you don't make any mistakes), because nothing is open after school hours: 8 days (so in reality, more like 12).
Total cost: 15,299b ($513)
If $513 doesn't seem like a lot of money to pay to stay in Thailand legally for a year, well...in many ways, it isn't. But for some perspective, here's some other things you can get with that money here: a gently used motorbike, 4 months' share of rent and utilities, 382 delicious Thai lunches, 5 laptops, 15 gently used guitars, 100 skirts ideal for teaching.
But wait! I forgot a step!
...
10. Transferring the work permit and visa to a new job.
- I tricked you! This isn't possible. That's right; all this must, essentially, be repeated, despite us having only really finished it a month ago. But here's the catch: before you can begin the process again, the work permit needs to be returned (a trip to the labour department and some forms), and the extension of stay on your visa needs to be cancelled (a trip to the immigration department). It would be difficult to get these done on the same day, owing to the aforementioned limitations of the immigration office. Once the work permit is cancelled, though, you have 24 hours to leave the country. Every day you stay over will cost you 500b. In practice, people tend to ask immigration for an extension period of 7 days (1900b) and then head to Laos as soon as possible, but you need to have all your paperwork ready and waiting.
And so, the adventure begins for us again...luckily, we think we'll be able to hold onto our work permit indefinitely, and wait until October (when we may return home) to get a new visa in America.
If this post was boring, confusing, and made you feel uncomfortable and tired, it should have. While writing it, I reminded myself of about 5 more things I need to do in the coming months to stay legal. We haven't even dipped into what we've had to do for our motorbike, bank accounts, and phone service. Though I'm not that aware of the process in other countries, I can definitely say that this experience has made me far more sympathetic to immigrants and expats in other countries. Red tape is exhausting, and sometimes the whole process just seems aimed at making sure you don't want to stay another year.
Next post to come: more about our amazing new job!
[Sidebar from A: And if our blog ever becomes famous then maybe people living and/or working in Thailand can use this as the guide that we never had (unless everything changes in a year, which it probably will).]
1. The Tourist Visa.
- You can technically just enter Thailand by air and get a free 30 days in the country, but that's typically not long enough to leave enough time for finding a job and getting the paperwork done for your new visa. In reality, it's smarter to apply in your home country for a 2 month tourist visa. Luckily, one of 3 Thai embassies in the US is located in LA (the others are Washington D.C. and Chicago), so that's where we got ours.
Time commitment: Next day processing.
Cost: $40 (1192 b)
2. Non-immigrant B Visa Paperwork.
- After securing a stable and well-paying job (this part was a breeeeeeeeeze, of course), your respectable business should get a start on your non-immigrant B visa paperwork. Honestly, I have no idea what it entails, but it all seems very complicated and, to my understanding, often falsified. The whole process takes anywhere from a week to months, and you just kind of have to hope it's happening and being done for you. The paperwork has to be dated for the day you plan to get your visa and addressed to the embassy you're planning to visit (in our case, Vientiane, Laos). After receiving this, you need a couple hundred photos (okay, like 6) and several copies of everything you have that proves you're human and American and a graduate of some sort of school.
Time commitment: Anywhere from 1 week to...months.
Cost: None, unless you have to bribe someone to do it all faster.
3. Trip to Laos.
- Unless you're really good at navigating the Thai/Lao bus system and want to save about 200 baht, it's best to stop in at any number of small tour agencies and book a "VIP bus" to Laos (see previous posts about Laos, where this experience was described in painful detail). You'll need to also buy a Lao visa upon entry (good for 30 days, but only used for 2, typs). The first day, you submit your paperwork and hope that your school didn't forget anything, in which case you would have to go all the way back to Thailand and start again (whiiich happened to the guy in front of us). You pick it up the next afternoon and head back to Thailand.
Time commitment: 2 days/3 nights (not including the day of your return, which is lost due to sleep deprivation)
Cost: Bus (1900b) + Lao visa ($35/1043b) + hotel (500b) = 3443
4. Non-Immigrant B Visa.
- You can choose between a single entry and multiple entry visa. Before going through the process, it was almost impossible to know which one we were supposed to get. So we guessed, went for the cheaper one, and hoped fervently that we weren't wrong and wouldn't have to return to Laos. As it turns out (we think) they end up having the same cost/effect, but with drastically different mechanisms of operation. With a single entry visa, after entering Thailand from Laos you have 90 days to complete your paperwork or you must leave, and your visa will be cancelled. After getting your work permit, your single-entry visa can then be extended to a full year. However, leaving the country at this point will void both your visa and work permit, so you have to get a re-entry permit (see below). With a multiple entry visa, upon entering Thailand you again have 90 days to figure out your paperwork. However, if you leave the country during this time, you may do so and then return without cancelling the visa. You can do this 3 times, which essentially makes this a year-long visa wherin you must leave the country every 90 days.
Time commitment: Next day processing.
Cost: Single entry (2000b) or Multiple entry (5000b)
4a. Visa Pages.
- At this point, becoming legal had eaten up about 5 of my passport pages, and I had a total of 0 left. If you think using up all your visa pages sounds ridiculous, in southeast Asia it's really easy. A combination of poorly-placed stamps and unnecessary visas will do the trick pretty quickly. Additional pages used to be free, but alas, no longer. Annoyingly enough, the US consulate only has appointments to add pages on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and as these tend to fill up weeks in advance, this can really put a spanner in the works for a while.
Time commitment: 2 hours
Cost: $82 (2444) :[
5. Work Permit Paperwork.
- After getting your non-immigrant B visa, you have 90 days to get your work permit paperwork in order, receive your work permit, and then extend your visa. Again, various Thai documents are procured from some official location, and that tends to take a couple weeks. You will also need to go to the hospital and get a syphilis test and be told, in writing, that you're not dying.
Time commitment: About a month of waiting (paperwork); 2 hours (hospital tests)
Cost: Syphilis test (320b)
6. Work Permit.
Paperwork and 1,000 more photos and copies in hand, you need to head to the labour department, get very lost, and eventually submit your paperwork for a work permit. You can pick it up 7 business days later.
Time commitment: 7 business days
Cost: 3000b
7. Non-immigrant B Visa extension.
- This is where the fun starts: in the Immigration department. Basically, a very very tiny crowded building with lots of queue signs with red numbers that don't seem to correspond to anything. Our first trip, we spent a while wandering around and going inside and out trying to find somewhere to get a number. Eventually we just asked for help at the front desk, but we were told it was too late to be helped (it was 2pm; the place closes at 4pm) and we would have to come back the next day. A week later, we came at 1pm. We should mention that on weekdays we could only go after work and Immigration is closed on weekends, so we were lucky that school had ended early this day. Again too late, but we managed to plead our case and get a quick appointment. Boom! Visa extended to one year!
Time commitment: 2 hours (if we had done it right, 5)
Cost: 1,900b
8. Re-Entry Permit
- When it came time to head to Vietnam, we had to get a re-entry permit so that leaving the country wouldn't void both our precious visa and work permit. Unfortunately, back to the immigration department. This time, we headed there at 9am (it opens at 8am), heeding the warnings that we were too late to be served last time. We were laughed away and told to come earlier the next day. Bewildered, I went home to do some more extensive research on the Thai expat forums, as the Thai immigration site itself is completely unhelpful. Apparently, if you want any hope of being served, you need to arrive between 6 and 7am. Unexpected. The next day, we arrived at 6:30, received a paper number (later determined to be useless), waited until 8 when the doors opened, received a printed paper number, waited for that number to be called and received a plastic number, and then waited until that number was called. Once called, we handed in our forms and more pictures and copies and waited another 2 hours. Finally, we had a stamp in our passports saying we could leave the country and return.
Note: You can get a single re-entry permit, good for one re-entry, or a multiple re-entry permit, good for the entirety of your visa's validity. (1000/3800b). So it's a gamble - if you think you'll leave the country 4 times on your visa, it's worth it. If not...you're stuck doing this process every time you want to leave, but you might pay less.
Time commitment: In theory, 5 hours.
Cost: 1000b
9. - until you leave the country for reals. 90 day check-ins.
- If you don't want to get deported, you have two choices - either leave the country every 90 days (after getting the appropriate permit), or check in at immigration every 90 days. The timing has been right, so we have yet to need to worry about this. We'll let you know in...50 days. It's going to be fun!
Time commitment: 5 hours/1+ days every 90 days
Cost: None/re-entry permit (1000b) + trip away (at bare minimum, 1000b) = 2,000b
Time span: 6-9 months and then every 90 days
Absolute minimum number of days on which you must miss some work (if you don't make any mistakes), because nothing is open after school hours: 8 days (so in reality, more like 12).
Total cost: 15,299b ($513)
If $513 doesn't seem like a lot of money to pay to stay in Thailand legally for a year, well...in many ways, it isn't. But for some perspective, here's some other things you can get with that money here: a gently used motorbike, 4 months' share of rent and utilities, 382 delicious Thai lunches, 5 laptops, 15 gently used guitars, 100 skirts ideal for teaching.
But wait! I forgot a step!
...
10. Transferring the work permit and visa to a new job.
- I tricked you! This isn't possible. That's right; all this must, essentially, be repeated, despite us having only really finished it a month ago. But here's the catch: before you can begin the process again, the work permit needs to be returned (a trip to the labour department and some forms), and the extension of stay on your visa needs to be cancelled (a trip to the immigration department). It would be difficult to get these done on the same day, owing to the aforementioned limitations of the immigration office. Once the work permit is cancelled, though, you have 24 hours to leave the country. Every day you stay over will cost you 500b. In practice, people tend to ask immigration for an extension period of 7 days (1900b) and then head to Laos as soon as possible, but you need to have all your paperwork ready and waiting.
And so, the adventure begins for us again...luckily, we think we'll be able to hold onto our work permit indefinitely, and wait until October (when we may return home) to get a new visa in America.
If this post was boring, confusing, and made you feel uncomfortable and tired, it should have. While writing it, I reminded myself of about 5 more things I need to do in the coming months to stay legal. We haven't even dipped into what we've had to do for our motorbike, bank accounts, and phone service. Though I'm not that aware of the process in other countries, I can definitely say that this experience has made me far more sympathetic to immigrants and expats in other countries. Red tape is exhausting, and sometimes the whole process just seems aimed at making sure you don't want to stay another year.
Next post to come: more about our amazing new job!
Oh, this blog WILL become famous, and I am going to turn it into a book! I'm tired now, I think I need a nap...
ReplyDeletei'm bored, confused, uncomfortable, and tired.
ReplyDelete-sammers