Work Permit & Visa Services Thailand

Two documents, from two different authorities: a Non-Immigrant B Visa (entry and stay — issued by a Royal Thai embassy or consulate, with extensions of stay handled by the Immigration Bureau) and a Work Permit (issued by the Department of Employment under the Ministry of Labour). Both must be in place before work begins. For each, we prepare and file applications, manage renewals ahead of expiry, and coordinate cancellations on departure.

Specialist routes — SMART Visa, Long-Term Resident (LTR) visa, and permanent residency applications — sit outside our standard work permit and visa scope. If your situation involves these, we can refer you to immigration specialists who focus on those specific routes, or discuss whether the standard Work Permit and Non-B framework is a better fit.

The Department of Employment applies employer-side criteria before a work permit can be sponsored: a registered Thai entity, and — under the commonly applied criteria for standard companies — a ratio of four Thai employees per work permit and THB 2 million in registered capital per foreign hire, alongside signed employment documents and role justification. BOI-promoted companies are assessed under different criteria through the BOI framework.

We review your entity profile against these criteria before any application is filed — headcount, capital structure, and documentation — and tell you plainly if the sponsorship base isn't there yet, with options to strengthen it before submission rather than after a rejection.

If your filing volume is high enough that bundling makes sense, or if you want work permit administration combined with broader HR function outsourcing under one retainer, see our HR Shared Services page — that's the right framing for those engagements.

Yes. Companies promoted by the Board of Investment can process visas and work permits through the One-Stop Service Center for Visas and Work Permits (OSS), which brings Immigration Bureau and Department of Employment processing together in a single expedited channel — typically the fastest and most predictable route available to eligible employers.

We advise upfront on which route applies to your entity — standard DOE and embassy processing, or the BOI OSS channel — and prepare the filing accordingly. What we commit to on every route is filing-quality: honest eligibility advice before submission, complete and accurate documentation, and substantive responses to any authority queries. Approval decisions themselves always remain with the authorities, and no agent can guarantee them.

Processing times are set and updated by each authority and vary by filing type, applicant profile, and the current queue. We don't publish our own timelines because doing so would imply control over a process that's entirely the authorities'. Instead, we point clients to the Department of Employment's and the Immigration Bureau's current guidance for each filing type and update expectations if queues lengthen or shorten.

For reference: official guidance is published by the DOE — Work Permits and the Immigration Bureau — Visas & Extensions, while the BOI — One-Stop Service Center offers expedited combined processing for promoted companies. When you engage us for a filing, we share current expectations for your specific filing type and flag any unusual queue behaviour we're seeing.

Yes. The spouse and children of a Non-Immigrant B visa and work permit holder can apply for Non-Immigrant O visas, linked to the primary applicant's status. A dependant Non-O visa does not carry work rights — if a spouse intends to work in Thailand, they need their own Non-Immigrant B visa and work permit sponsored by their own employer.

We coordinate dependant filings in parallel with the primary application — relationship documentation, financial evidence, and extension-of-stay applications aligned to the primary holder's dates — so the family relocates on one timeline. Dependant extensions and 90-day reporting obligations run alongside the primary holder's, and we track both so renewals never drift out of sync.

Two renewal tracks run in parallel: the work permit is renewed through the Department of Employment before it expires, and the extension of stay on the Non-Immigrant B visa is handled separately by the Immigration Bureau. Letting either lapse puts the employee — and the employer — out of compliance, so we file both ahead of expiry.

On top of renewals, every foreign resident completes 90-day reporting to the Immigration Bureau, and needs a re-entry permit before travelling abroad to keep the extension of stay valid. Departures require work permit cancellation with the Department of Employment. We track these cycles for every filing we manage.

If you'd rather have renewals, reporting, and the broader HR function — payroll, employee lifecycle, statutory filings — handled under one retainer, see our HR Shared Services page. Standalone per-application engagement remains the right fit for employers who only need the immigration filings themselves.