Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing “horror stories” associated with "Sponsored Work Permits". I have done a number of videos in the past on this term, "Sponsored Work Permit". I find it to be kind of a weird empty kind of phrase. It seems to be bandied about out there in the ether of the internet as kind of a term that is supposed to I don't know add some kind of legitimacy. First of all Work Permits are sponsored. It is one of the requirements. You have got to have some sort of sponsor; Thai sponsor, corporate sponsor. It could be in the context of maybe even a non-profit or something but to have work authorization in Thailand there is a sponsorship component associated with a local entity. 

Now this term "Sponsored Work Permit" term it is often used colloquially to talk about essentially a Work Permit where someone is just "buying the work permit", they are buying use of a Work Permit. They are basically paying someone to put them on their books as an employee or as somebody working in the company and then getting them a Work Permit. It is oftentimes done pretextually, I would argue pretensively especially where they have nothing to do with the business at hand; they are just on the books because they want to have that document. 

Now the reason for this video is you need to be careful with this stuff. I have done a number of videos on this and in recently in about the last month and a half, about the last six weeks it has come up. I have had two different folks that have contacted us after having a real for lack of a better term, a real "horror story" associated with one of these "sponsored Work Permits". In one case it was a situation where there was an inspection and the person was not on the premises and then the person inspecting asked: "When are they here?" and basically somebody said "yeah, not at all!" and that resulted in a really bad situation for that person. There was another situation where they were dealing with their renewal and basically some questions were asked by the adjudicating Officer regarding what they did and some things like this and they couldn't answer basic questions associated with the underlying business and it resulted in heavy scrutiny and ultimately in that case, just a failure to get the thing renewed which put that person in a really precarious position.

Long story short, be careful, well not even careful. Sponsored Work Permits or specifically this notion of just buying a Work Permit of someone renting it if you will, you need to be really careful with that to the point of just don't do it because there can be all kinds of problems especially if you have no idea what the Company you are dealing with is doing. On top of that, there may possibly be some argument that hey you know this could be a level of fraud or even maybe human trafficking depending on the circumstances, although that is a pretty tenuous analysis, I can see a set of circumstances where one could make sort of the argument that yeah that is a trafficking issue. 

Long story short, if you are dealing with a Work Permit, you are wanting to work in Thailand, go through the proper channels, get everything formalized in the correct manner pursuant to Thai Law.