Confusion as migrant verification period ends

Confusion as migrant verification period ends

Migrant workers beat the Friday deadline to verify their nationality at a centre in Rat Burana district in Bangkok.
Migrant workers beat the Friday deadline to verify their nationality at a centre in Rat Burana district in Bangkok.

CHIANG MAI -- Confusion reigned among migrant labourers as the nationality verification (NV) scheme, which mainly affects people from adjoining countries, ended on Friday, and authorities sought to calm fears of mass deportations.

Ruchuchai Potha, deputy chief of the Chiang Mai employment office, said there were 69,588 registered migrant labourers  from Myanmar, 156 from  Laos and 34 from Cambodia in the province. Most had already gone through the NV process and only 2,669, about 4%, did not have valid passports.

He said 5,677 who already have passports had not yet filed for work permits.

The impact of the Dec 14 deadline for nationality verification might not be great for those who already have gone through some legalisation process, Mr Ruchuchai said, but it would be huge for all the illegal immigrant workers who would like to be "above ground".

He declined to provide any figure sindicating just how large the real illegal immigrant population is in the province.

Still for Korn, 26, a Shan migrant from Sansai sub-district, said he would like to ask the government to extend the deadline for at least another month.

"A passport costs 4,900 baht. I've paid 1,600 baht for the application but to complete the process I have to pay another 3,300 baht," said Mr Korn, who first came to Thailand in 2004.

"I've asked my construction employer for an advance but he refused, saying that I have to pay off the previous debt first."

Mr Korn said he would not have felt so discouraged if he did not have a 20-month old child who needed hospital treatment early this year for a lung infection.

"With my wife's wage, which will not come until the end of the month because she just resumed work after taking care of the baby, I should be able to pay all the remaining passport fees to the broker," said Mr Korn.

Until the government has cleared policy measures, Mr Korn's family had to live with the uncertainty of possibly being laid-off from work because employers do not want to risk hiring the illegal labour, or even being deported.

"I've already been through some of the process for temporary permission to work here, I don't want to waste the procedure that I've embarked on," he said.

"If we could make any plea, we would like to ask the government to both extend the deadline and to allow individual applications without having to go and pay double or triple prices to a broker."

The who already had a temporary (three-year) passport, dubbed the red passport, have until the end opf the month to change it to a six-year passport, dubbed a purple passport, according to the Chiang Mai branch of the Department of Employment. The eight NV centres, two of them along the border, will close down on Dec 28.

Procedures for migrant workers have been continually amended, gradually adding to the costly and cumbersome process for the workers. For example, the change from red to purple passport was needed because the two-year visa given to workers could be renewed for another two years while the old temporary passport has only three years' validity.

Headaches and hassles were even more vivid on the deadline day among the hundreds of migrants and employers waiting outside the provincial employment office, where some 30 brokers are situated.

A 32-year-old ethnic Pa-O migrant from Fang District said he already paid for the passport through the NV process in August, but the broker, PKA Associates, had given no explanation or comfort to the waiting applicants about whether they would  get the legal documents or not as the deadline was being implemented, he said.

"My point is, my work permit has recently expired, but I don't have the proper documents to file for a new one," he said.

A migrant worker from Lamphun province said her employer told her to come to Chiang Mai and wait for any clearer information from brokers or the authorities, perhaps they could do something to get proper documents.

"But we do not know anything about no-more extensions and the NV closures, and we are still not sure whether there will be any further problems," said the 25-year-old ethnic Shan.

Kritaya Archavanitkul, of Mahidol University's Institute for Population and Social Research, said the National Security Council still  wanted to deal with only skilled labour, but the reality was that Thailand has no pool of unskilled labour and unskilled migrants were the only answer for the Thai economy.

"We would like to see comprehensive and accommodative policy measures addressing fairly both skilled and unskilled migrants, as well as consideration for migrants' dependents," said Ms Kritaya.

Governments in Asean, Thailand included, needed to think thoroughly about migrant issues as the region was fast approaching the launch of the Asean economic community.

IPSR researcher Andy Hall said the Thai and Myanmar governments should be serious about wanting to resolve the passport problem. Myanmar was being flexible, but Thai authorities still insisted that workers needed to return to Myanmar and come back to Thailand on the new passport, he said.

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