Mekong Migration Network

The National Security Council is looking at granting foreign migrant status to about 200,000 illegal immigrants who have lived in Thailand for decades.

The council is considering offering the status, equivalent to permanent residency, to migrants who have lived in the country illegally for 20 to 30 years, NSC secretary-general Thawil Pliansri said.Their offspring will be given Thai nationality.

Mr Thawil said after a meeting of the NSC yesterday the 200,000 migrants were regarded as being “on the run” from authorities.

They fall into the “documented” group of illegal migrants.

Many more migrants, numbering about half a million, are believed to have slipped into the country illegally and are not documented.

Mr Thawil said giving the 200,000 documented illegal migrants the status of foreign migrants would benefit the country.

The state could keep track of their movements and collect taxes from them, he said.

Mr Thawil said another category of illegal migrants was the 100,000 people who fled strife in their home countries and entered Thailand through its western border.

These include Burmese, Rohingya, and North Korean refugees.

Mr Thawil said the government would provide this group with temporary shelter on the condition they were unarmed.

This group is not qualified to receive foreign status even if the NSC’s proposal to treat them in such a way is approved by the government, he said.

A security source said some members of this group showed no interest in settling in Thailand as they land on the border in the hope of being resettled in a third country.

Mr Thawil said some illegal migrants intentionally violate the law while staying here. They form criminal gangs or intentionally overstay their visas.

Authorities will step up measures to arrest them, once officials have completed an estimate of their numbers.

The NSC secretary-general said criteria for giving foreign migrant status to migrants included what jobs they have done during their illegal stay in the country.

If there is a labour skills shortage in that area, they stand a better chance of receiving legal status.

Published: 19/08/2010 at 12:00 AM

So we want migrant workers from Burma to be legal with passports and all, yet we still want them to submit to our old oppressive ways, is that it?

If not, then why have we refused to give legal migrant workers driving licences - on the grounds that they still pose a threat to national security?

Last week, the provincial authorities in Ranong stopped issuing driving licences to a batch of legal Burmese workers, following a protest from some 200 Ranong motorcyclists who feared that migrant workers would steal their jobs if allowed to drive.

Worse, they might abuse their new privilege and smuggle drugs and illegal workers into the country, said the motorcyclists.

Their concerns are understandable. But isn’t it the job of the police to arrest law breakers? Aren’t drug and human trafficking rings reportedly run by men in uniform, and not by migrant workers?

Also, is it right to comply to a demand which violates a basic human right of another person? Do we not consider the right to movement a basic human right? Or do we simply not see migrant workers as human? What is our real problem?

These workers have fled harsh poverty and persecution in Burma to toil here doing dirty and dangerous work at pitiful wages. Yet we condemn them as unwanted outsiders who burden us with social problems and infectious diseases. We dismiss the fact that it is our government’s support for the atrocious Burmese junta that has forced them to flee their homeland.

And it is our prejudice that makes us blind to their slave-like conditions.

We Thais pride ourselves as free people in a free land. Yet we celebrate confinement, which is part of slavery, for migrant workers. Why is that so?

Since we brand them illegal, which is criminal in our view, we believe the problems from migrant workers and human trafficking will disappear if all Burmese workers have legal entry. So we forcibly deport them to face danger, extortion and complex red tape back in Burma in order to obtain the passports, not to mention the astronomical fees involved. So far, only about 90,000 out of 2-3 million Burmese migrant workers in Thailand have succeeded in obtaining their passports.

Yet, after going through a difficult process, these legal workers are not promised the legal minimum wage nor the right to change employers. They are allowed to work only as labourers and domestic workers and, as before, denied the freedom of movement. With such little benefits, most migrant workers prefer to stay underground and remain exploited while human trafficking rings continue to thrive.

Regarding the Ranong incident, the driving licences for migrant workers are actually private and cannot be used for plying or running taxis or taxi-motorcycles. Also, migrant workers - legal or illegal - cannot travel outside their restricted zones. So a driving licence would only help them to commute within their area without fear of police extortion. Yet, this too is beyond their reach.

No, I am not writing about all this because it is a matter of life and death for migrant workers in Ranong to go buy food on their motorcycles. But it is a matter of life and death for us.

How can we get out of our political abyss and avoid future carnage if we still don’t see the weak and the poor as our equal human beings?

At the core of the social injustice and double standards that are threatening to tear our country apart is this very lack of respect for lawful needs and concerns of the people we view as inferior to ourselves, isn’t it? Migrant workers are at the lowest rung of our big-fish-eat-little-fish world. How we treat them is an indicator of social justice itself.

The May bloodshed may have shocked us into trying to fix structural injustice. But don’t bet on it if we still feel it is okay to treat migrant workers the way we do now. We cannot hope to get closer to a fair society because we do not have in our hearts what it takes to make this happen.

BANGKOK POST COMMENTARY

Published: 5/08/2010 at 12:00 AM

RANONG : Seventeen Burmese labourers have been granted work permits in an official ceremony marking the start of a fresh campaign to stop illegal immigrants from entering Thailand.

Burmese Deputy Foreign Minister Maung Myint and Labour Minister Chalermchai Sri-on presented the 17 labourers with the permits yesterday at the temporary Burmese national identification centre in Muang district.

The 17 fulfilled all the requirements to receive the documents which are classified as temporary passports and work permits. The labourers will go to work with a private company in Songkhla.

The minister said the 17 will set a good example for other potential Burmese workers.

The centre was opened on July 1 under an agreement between the two countries to verify the nationality of people wanting to enter Thailand to look for work.

It is a one-stop service with Burmese authorities in Kawthaung being transferred to the Ranong centre to work alongside Thai officials.

Centres have also been opened in Mae Sot district in Tak and Mae Sai district in Chiang Rai under the new agreement.

The Burmese officials will verify the nationality of applicants and issue them with temporary passports, after which the Thai officials will issue them with work permits.

Maung Myint estimated there are 1.2 million Burmese workers living illegally in Thailand.

Mr Chalermchai said cooperation between the two countries will end the problem of illegal Burmese immigrant workers.

The centres expect to check the nationality of 760,000 applicants in the next two years, he said.

Illegal Burmese migrant workers deported back to eastern Burma from Thailand are being asked to pay border crossing fees by the pro-junta Democratic Karen Buddhist Army (DKBA) militia.

The group has set up unofficial border checkpoints in the Karen state border town of Myawaddy, across the Moei river from Thailand’s Mae Sot. Illegal Burmese migrants are now returning in droves after Thailand launched a police crackdown last month.

A Thailand-based Burmese labour rights group said that around 200 migrants each day are crossing the border, many of whom were arrested in Mae Sot and Bangkok, despite Burmese authorities accepting only 400 per week.

The remaining are therefore forced to go through unofficial DKBA checkpoints, which charge 1200 kyat (US$40). Migrant workers often earn less than half of Thailand’s 206 baht ($US6) per day minimum wage.

Moe Swe, general secretary of the Yaung Chi Oo labour group, said the Burmese government has always denied the amount of migrants in Thailand and therefore didn’t want to accept them back.

“This could also be due to concerns that [the Burmese junta’s] political image will be damaged if they accept back a lot of migrant workers and then have a high rate of unemployment in the country.”

He added that the reluctance of the Burmese government meant that Thailand was forcibly sending the migrants through DKBA checkpoints.

A DKBA official at one of the checkpoints in Myawaddy told DVB that different charges were placed on different people.

“We charge 400 baht [US$12] to those arrested in Mae Sot and 1200 baht to those from Bangkok because they earn different amounts,” he said. “I don’t think it’s right to criticise us for charging the money; we do things according to our own policy. If someone wants to come through our checkpoint, then pay us the money. If they don’t want to pay, then don’t come across.”

A Burmese migrant worker said: “If someone gets arrested [in Thailand] for having no documents, then he or she will be detained in jail for one day and then get deported. There are two DKBA checkpoints [run by DKBA brigades] 16 and 999 and they are charging 1200 baht from the migrants. That is blood-sucking.”

Another migrant worker said that most Burmese nationals arrested for illegally staying in Thailand prefer to be deported back via the DKBA checkpoints because it is easier for them to cross the border back into Thailand through those checkpoints.

Moe Swe said the Thai government’s crackdown on migrants is not effective, given that they are still coming back into Thailand after deportation.

“Also, the current [migrant registration] system which gives employers the control over the labour card should be changed,” he added. “Migrants will become more interested in registering if they are allowed to apply for the labour cards themselves.”

“Secondly, the [national verification process] between the Thai and the Burmese government [is flawed] because the migrants don’t trust the Burmese government and [cannot afford] the high costs of the process. We would like to suggest the government thoroughly revises the system.”

By NAW NOREEN

CAMBODIAN migrant workers in Thailand who signed up to participate in a controversial registration scheme implemented earlier this year are now able to complete their applications, and Cambodian officials based in Bangkok have been tasked with facilitating the process, according to a report from the International Organisation for Migration released this week.

The report states that workers who successfully complete the nationality-verification process, wherein workers were to submit documents to their home governments in order to apply for work permits, will be allowed to remain in Thailand for two more years.

Those who failed to meet the March 2 deadline to begin the process – as well as those who were ineligible because they entered Thailand illegally – have been targeted in a recent wave of mass arrests and deportations.

Rights groups have expressed alarm over the crackdown, which stemmed from a June 2 order signed by Thai Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva that called for the establishment of a “special centre to suppress, arrest and prosecute alien workers who are working underground”.

According to statistics from Bangkok-based Human Rights and Development Foundation, 43,301 Cambodian migrant workers missed the deadline.

Claudia Natali, a labour migration programme manager at IOM, said yesterday that the last stage of the nationality-verification process involves the issuance of temporary passports (TPs), or identification cards.

She said it would be made easier with the relevant Cambodian officials in Thailand.

“The last stage involves the presence of officials of the other countries to actually deliver the passport after the verification has taken place,” she said. “In the case of Burmese migrants, they have to go back to their country to collect the TP. For Cambodians, the issuance of identification cards happens in Thailand.”

According to the IOM report, released Tuesday, Cambodian officials began the final phase of the process on April 30, operating out of the Office of Foreign Workers Administration in Bangkok. They are set to relocate on Monday to a separate site in Bangkok.

The final deadline for the completion of the entire nationality-verification process is February 2012.

Since the June 2 Thai government order, at least 1,294 illegal Cambodian migrants have been detained and deported, according to reports from various Thai news agencies.

Natali said these workers would not be given a new chance to apply for the nationality-verification process.

“Migrants who get deported and want to come back to Thailand are supposed to go through the formal [memorandum of understanding] procedure,” she said.

Hem Bunny, director of the Cambodian Labour Ministry’s Employment and Manpower Department, said this procedure required workers to “apply to a company known to the Ministry of Labour, who will train the worker for three months before they are allowed to work abroad”.

“The company then sends documents about the worker to the Foreign Ministry, who then send the documents to the Cambodian embassy in Thailand,” he said.

He added that many migrant workers found such processes unappealing.

“Most residents would rather work illegally because they don’t have to take so much time applying,” he said. “However, it is dangerous, and the government urges them to apply legally because the law can protect them.”