A Thai father and daughter will be remembered in the US this week, after a family tragedy highlighted abuses of the American immigration system.
A memorial service will be held for Sittichai Boonkeian, 42, and his daughter Ananya Mungmart, 13, at Wylie-Baxley Funeral Home on Florida’s Merritt Island.
On Feb 21, friends of Sittichai, who worked as a chef at a Thai restaurant in Rockledge, broke into a Brevard County home and discovered his body hanging from a ceiling fan.
TORN APART: Sittichai Boonkeian, with daughter Ananya and wife Chonrat.
Ananya's lifeless body was found on a bed. Local police are treating the case as a murder-suicide and are awaiting the autopsy on the girl.
Among the mourners will be Chonrat Mungmart, 43, who has been given special dispensation to travel to the US to attend the funerals.
“He loved his family and kept working hard,” she told the Bangkok Post Sunday.
The friends went to the Brevard County home after Ms Chonrat, who lives in Chon Buri, told them she had last heard from her husband on Feb 18 on the Line app. She had been separated from her husband since 2012 after US Immigration authorities had thrown her out of the country for visa offences.
Ms Chonrat believes pressure over Sittichai’s failure to get her back into the US and reunite the family drove her husband to his painful decision.
In 2005, at the suggestion of relatives living in Florida, Sittichai obtained a green card to work at the Thai restaurant. He wanted to bring his family with him, but using a green card he faced a five-year wait for a spousal visa due to the large number of applicants.
A fake marriage was arranged between Ms Chonrat and a US man to get her into the country. An American lawyer told her she would have no trouble divorcing her new husband and marrying Sittichai when his US citizenship was eventually approved.
She succeeded in getting a K-1, or fiancee visa, for herself, while Ananya was granted a non-immigrant visa as the child of a K-1 holder. The lawyer was paid US$6,000 (212,200 baht) for the arranged marriage and visas.
Ten months after her bogus marriage, Ms Chonrat divorced her American husband and signed a US marriage paper with Sittichai. She no longer had a spousal visa and was in the US illegally. Ms Chonrat believed it wouldn't be a problem as her lawyer had given her assurances she wouldn't get caught, and there were many Thais in the US in similar situations.
The family stayed happily together until February 2012 when Sittichai was finally granted US citizenship. He then sponsored Ms Chonrat to apply for an immigrant visa as the spouse of a US citizen.
With the help of a Thai lawyer, she got through the first interview with a US Immigration official. However, during a second interview she was confronted about her fake marriage and illegal stay. She was put on a blacklist and deported to Thailand in October 2012.
“We didn’t have much knowledge about this [the visa application law]. So we complied with the lawyers with no expectation of any follow-up trouble,” said Ms Chonrat.
“The vast majority of Thais may want to go to the US seeking opportunities. But I wanted to be there because of the family. We were never apart [prior to my deportation].”
Ananya was sent back with her mother, but found it hard to adjust to Thai culture after growing up in the US. When he saved up enough money, Sittichai sometimes returned to Thailand.
Sittichai took her back to Florida in 2014 on an immigrant visa for a US citizen’s unmarried child aged under 21. He tried to sponsor his wife for a visa.
A request for US citizenship for Ananya had not been processed at the time of her death.
Ms Chonrat's visa application was rejected twice by the US Embassy. Her third attempt ended with her being accused of giving a false statement.
Her husband racked up another $1,200 in legal bills trying to bring his wife to the US. She says not all of them were paid.
Sittichai was also worried about his inability to care for Ananya. Working in a restaurant gave him limited time with her and she was often home alone.
As she was approaching puberty, she would need her mother for advice. In a hand-written letter to the US Immigration Service in Thailand in support of her mother's visa application, Ananya asked officials to forget "all the bad things in the past".
"If my mom passed, we were gonna go shopping, dance classes and starting a small business. We talked about how she was going to help me raise my kids and how I would buy her a house in California next to my future house.
"We were going to do mom and daughter type stuff. To be honest, you can’t do that with your dad … It doesn’t help that she is half way across the world and the only time I see her nowadays is on a screen.”
After the deaths of her husband and daughter, Ms Chonrat was granted an emergency three-month visa from the US Embassy. She arrived in Florida on Monday for the funerals and will return to Thailand on March 29. A traditional Thai funeral will be held in Chon Buri.
“I can’t figure out why [he killed himself]. But I’m sure that it must be because there was a lot of pressure on him,” she said.
“He might think if he died, who will be with his daughter because I couldn’t be there. So he might have taken her with him because he didn’t want her to be in difficulty.”
A former Thai consular official who worked in the US said there were large numbers of Thais trying to cheat the country's immigration system — perhaps half of those already in the US.
Many are given incorrect information by other Thai migrants or lawyers who often convince them to take a shortcut to get into the US, despite the illegalities. Many are also deceived by Thai gangs who promise illegal visas and work permits.
“There are many victims. It’s better to go along with the legal process. It’s not worth breaking the law,” the former official said.
The US Embassy in Thailand declined to comment on the case other than to say the deaths were sad.
Ms Chonrat said she regretted her actions but believed hiring a lawyer would make her "safe". She said if she had the chance again, she would keep her daughter with her in Thailand.
"No one should jump the visa queue because you will live without freedom. You will live as an illegal person," she said. "If you want to be in the US, do it the right way."