In only a vaguely related tangent, was it at all challenging to immigrate to the country? I've been thinking about these sorts of possibilities but for the most part there always seems to be some challenging aspect to long-term residence. I'm from Canada, and am thinking about various countries in Europe and the tropics.
My emigration will happen officially next year. For me there would be several ways to make this emigration work:
- I could get married to my girlfriend, this would give me a marriage visa.
- I can pay for a special type of visa with a certain duration (choices are 5, 10, 20 years). A 5-year visa would cost around 10.000 EUR or 8 EUR / day and gives some extra benefits, like yearly health check-ups at a major hospital, free limousine service near airport, preferred treatment at airport (not wait in long queues), legal help, etc...
- From 50+ years one can get a retirement visa (but I am only 36 years old, so this doesn't apply to me).
- I can work for a company inside the country and get a work visa. Easily do-able as a software developer, but obviously will earn a lot less compared to North Western Europe. But earning 2.500 EUR a month as software dev is still a lot, about 5x the average income.
- At least one company allows you to freelance and they handle taxes for you and give you a work permit. But all invoices should be handled through this company and they take a 30% cut.
There are some other ways as well, like an investor visa if you invest a large amount of money in the country.
I will go for the second option for now, pay for the 5-year visa. After 5 years I could extend this with a 10-year visa. And from then on I can use a retirement visa.
Thanks for the overview. I wasn't aware there were purely transactional visas like that.
Having explored options for a variety of countries, as a software developer without a degree there aren't a lot of options outside marriage, investment, and ancestry.
Thailand. The paid visa plan is called Thailand Elite[0]. Apparently there should also be some sort of new visa that could be useful for digital nomads introduced in 2018 [1]. The company that can provide a work permit in exchange if 30% of your invoice is called IGLU [2].
By the way, after staying 5 or 10 year inside the country, one can apply for a Thai citizenship, which is something I will consider [3].
