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As the title of this video suggests, we are posing the question: "Why are Work Permits needed in addition to Business Visas here in Thailand?” The reason, there are a lot of questions that I kind of overlook I have just been out here a long time; I have been doing what we do here for a decade and a half and I sometimes forget that people that are new to Thailand don't have all the information. They don't really understand what's going on or they are just not informed; they haven't been here long enough. So I sometimes will kind of speed through very fundamental questions that people who are new here don't really understand. This is kind of one of them.

I often talk about Work Permits, Business Visas, usually separately, sometimes together but one thing that somebody brought up to me yesterday and she just asked the question: ”Why do I need this Work Permit in addition to the Business Visa?”. It's not a bad question because most countries that issue a Business Visa there is work authorization attached to it. Now there are exceptions to that for example the B-1 Visa in the United States is not necessarily work authorized in the same way that an H-1 B Visa is or somebody who has a Green Card is work authorized, they are shades of grey and Thailand is the same. The B Visa, the Business Visa itself, does not provide work authorization in and of itself. You have to get a Work Permit in addition to a Business Visa. 

Part of the reason for this is overall bureaucratic timing and what I mean by that is Business Visas were created in the 70s under the Immigration Act I believe of '79, ultimately of '79. Work Permits came along later. Work Permits came along to the best of my knowledge in the '80s. They were a different thing, Ministry of Labour had them and then they evolved pretty rapidly over the course of about 10 or 12 years basically to look like the Work Permits now that we see on a standard basis in Thai companies where you have got a foreigner working there. But yeah they are different. It is two different authorizations, required by two different Ministries. One of them is the Ministry of Labour, the other one is the Immigration Department under the auspices of the Ministry of Interior when you are dealing with a Business Visa Extension. So yeah, they are two different things. Why? It's just kind of a fact of circumstance at this point. This is just the way it kind of evolved but yeah it is a little bit for lack of a better word, a little bit difficult for many to grasp at when they first get here that yeah you need both a Business Visa and a Work Permit in order to work in the Kingdom of Thailand.