thai immigration

A Visit to Bangkok’s New One Stop Immigration Office

Keeping on top of Thailand’s ever-changing visa and work permit regulations can be a pretty tiring job. Rules often vary from office to office and border crossing to border crossing, and updates, amendments and changes to the rules and overall system are hard enough to find in Thai, let alone English. Thankfully, there’s a small army of dedicated locals who like to post no-bull advice on their experiences, and this is the gist of this post – a visit to the One Stop Immigration office at their new location on Rama IV Road.

Visas, Work Permits and the Art of the Lineup

Never take for granted how cushy it is living as a citizen in your home country. It's quite a shock, moving abroad, especially when it's to Thailand (Asia in general actually, but I live in Thailand so let's use that as our example), where you will never be considered a citizen. It's sometimes a shock to expats living here - back home there are many races, and all are Canadians. Asian, black, Indian, Spanish... if you're a citizen of the country, you're a citizen. You can say African-Canadian, Spanish-Canadian, if you want to split hairs, but you still get all the benefits of being a citizen. Not in Thailand; if you're not born of at least one Thai parent, you will never be Thai, legally nor in the eyes of any Thai person. End of story. So what are we left with? An ultra-bureaucratic maze of paperwork and forms in order to stay in the country legally.