Visa & immigration services in Southeast Asia
Asia Relocation files immigration in three countries — the Philippines, Vietnam and Thailand. Coming into the region, staying legal once you are here, moving from one of the three to another, or closing a stay before you leave: the file is prepared and followed by our own people, in the country where it is decided.
From a distance the three countries we cover can look like variations on one destination. They are not. The Philippines, Vietnam and Thailand each run their own immigration system, their own authorities and their own vocabulary, and the categories rarely map onto one another. A file assembled for one of them is not a file for the next: different documents, a different order, a different renewal calendar. The practical consequence is that a regional decision — which country, in what sequence, and which entity employs whom — is an immigration decision as much as a commercial one, and it costs far less to take it before anyone books a flight.
This page exists for the questions that sit above any single country. Which of the three fits the people you actually need to move. What happens when somebody transfers from one of them to another. What has to be closed down when a posting ends and a family leaves the region altogether. If the country is already settled, go straight to the desk that will file your papers: Thailand, the Philippines or Vietnam, where each team lists the routes it handles and the obligations that follow them.
We did not arrive in the three countries at once, and that matters more than it sounds. Asia Relocation started in the Philippines in 2011, opened in Vietnam in 2022, and in Thailand in 2025. The order still shows in the depth of each catalogue: the Philippine desk documents by far the widest set of routes, Vietnam the residence-card lifecycle in detail from first entry to cancellation, Thailand the long-stay categories and the reporting duties that come with them. We would rather say that than pretend the three are interchangeable.
Immigration is also where subcontracting hurts most. In this industry the critical steps are routinely handed to a local agent the client never meets. We chose the opposite: immigration, home search, coordination and the move itself are done by our own staff. That is what lets us give you something exact instead of something reassuring, and it keeps a single point of responsibility when a file stalls. Our relocation and moving teams sit under the same roof as immigration, so a residence application and a shipment are planned against each other rather than reconciled after one of them has slipped.
Pick a country, or start from the situation
The first three lines send you to the desk that will file your papers. The last three are the regional situations that no single country page can answer on its own.
Thailand
Thailand routes long stays through a set of purpose-built categories — work and business, study, family, retirement — and the right to stay is never the right to earn: paid employment needs a separate permit held alongside the visa, and the two have to stay aligned at every renewal. Investment-backed and promotion-backed routes exist for companies setting up here. Expect the calendar to matter as much as the first approval: periodic reporting, permission to re-enter before you travel, extensions filed in time. Our Thai desk handles the categories, the permits and the cycle that follows.
Philippines
The widest catalogue of the three, and the one that most often surprises newcomers. Employment routes come paired with a separate labour authorisation, and short assignments have their own permits rather than borrowing the long-stay ones. There are marriage and family routes, permanent and retirement routes, and a path back to citizenship for people of Filipino descent. Foreign residents also carry a registration card with its own issue, renewal and cancellation cycle, and a long tail of clearances sits around every change of status. This is our oldest desk.
Vietnam
Vietnam separates entry from residence. You arrive on a visa, then move to a residence card, and it is the card you actually live on. Employment adds a work permit that has to be secured before the card can be issued, which puts the employer squarely on the critical path rather than in a supporting role. Investor and family routes run alongside. Vietnam is also the country where leaving is the most explicitly formalised: permission to exit and return, and a cancellation step when the card is given up.
Transferring between our three countries
A move from one of our countries to another is two immigration files, not one, and the order decides whether there is a gap in the middle. The departure side has to be closed properly — a card cancelled, an authorisation closed, a clearance obtained — while the arrival side often needs papers that are far easier to collect before you leave than after. Because both desks are ours, we sequence the two against a single date instead of discovering the conflict at the airport.
Leaving Southeast Asia
Almost everything written about visas assumes you are arriving. Leaving has its own paperwork, and it is the part people find out about late — sometimes with a flight already booked. Depending on the country and on what you hold, that can mean cancelling a residence card, closing an employment authorisation, obtaining an exit clearance, or settling registrations before the departure can be routine. It also has to line up with the shipment and the end of the lease. We close a file with the same care we open one.
Multi-country mobility programmes
For companies moving people across more than one of the three: one interlocutor instead of three unrelated agents, the same coordinator, the same reporting format and the same documentation standard in every jurisdiction. Compliance is easier to defend when the evidence looks the same everywhere, and a budget is easier to hold when each country is scoped separately but quoted together. We build the programme around the roles you move, not around a catalogue.
Four directions, four different conversations
People reach this page from four situations, and they rarely need the same thing. It is worth knowing which one you are in before anyone starts naming categories.
Arriving in the region
You are coming to Southeast Asia and the country is not settled yet, or your employer is still arbitrating between them. Start from the profiles you need to move and how long they stay — the country choice usually follows from that, rather than the other way round.
Already settled in one country
You live here, and the work is now maintenance: extensions, renewals, reporting dates, a change of employer, a spouse or child joining you. None of it is dramatic — until a date is missed, and then it is expensive.
Moving between countries
A transfer inside the group of three. Two files, one date, and a departure side that has to be closed cleanly before the arrival side can be clean. This is the one situation no country page can handle alone.
Leaving the region
The posting ends, the company restructures, or retirement moves somewhere else. There is an orderly way to close a stay, and doing it properly is what keeps the door open if you ever come back.
One team in three countries, accountable for the whole file
In-house, not subcontracted
Immigration, home search, coordination and moving are done by our own staff. In a sector that routinely hands the critical steps to an agent you never meet, that is the difference between an exact answer and a comforting one.
One point of responsibility
When something stalls there is one name to call, and that name can see the whole file. No triangulating between three suppliers who each hold a piece of it.
Resident in all three
Not a broker with contacts. Teams that live in the Philippines, in Vietnam and in Thailand, each dealing with its own authorities in its own language and its own working week.
Built for regulated environments
Immigration is documentation, and documentation gets audited. We hold files to a single standard across the three countries, so a compliance question has one answer instead of three.
Modular, not a single package
The one-size package stopped working a long time ago. You take the countries and the services you actually need, priced separately, and leave the rest where it is.
Fixed scope, agreed first
You approve the route and the cost before a file is opened. No open-ended hours, and no discovering the real scope halfway through the process.
From an undecided situation to a filed application
Tell us the situation
Who is moving, what they will do there, how long they intend to stay, and who employs them. You do not need to know the name of a category — working that out is our job, and guessing it early is how people end up filing the wrong one.
Country and route assessment
We come back with the workable routes in each country in scope, what each one asks of you and of the employer, and the obligations that continue long after the approval arrives.
Fixed-scope proposal
One quote per country, itemised, with the timeline as we understand it that month. Nothing is filed and nothing is booked until you have approved it.
Filing, then the calendar
We assemble the file, submit it and follow it with the authorities — then we keep the dates: renewals, reporting, permission to travel, and the closing steps whenever the stay comes to an end.
Regional immigration FAQ
Which of your three countries is the easiest to move to?
Does one visa cover all three countries?
Our company is choosing between the three. Can you compare them for us?
I am transferring from one of your countries to another. What has to happen first?
What has to be closed before leaving Southeast Asia for good?
Can one contact handle a team spread across the three countries?
Can the immigration file and the shipment be handled by the same team?
How long has Asia Relocation been established in each country?
Visa & immigration guides
Vietnam Work Permit Exemptions 2026 | Decree 219 – 2026 update
Read →
Section 13 Quota Visa Philippines: 2026 Guide
Read →
Top 7 Cities in Thailand for Digital Nomads on DTV Visa
Read →
Thailand DTV Visa
Read →
Philippines SRRV 2025: Age Requirement Drops to 40
Read →
SRRV Philippines 2025
Read →
Philippines Work Visa Guide 2025
Read →
Suprising legal origin of the Philippines visa names
Read →Still deciding which country? Start with the situation.
Tell us who is moving, what they will do and how long they intend to stay — arriving in the region, moving inside it, or leaving it for good. We come back with the routes that work and a fixed scope for each country involved.
Get your immigration quote →