Informal migration for labor
Foreign workers in country
Deal struck for migrant workers in Thailand
Thailand has agreed to relax enforcement against expired documents held by migrant Cambodians, which become invalid when they switch jobs without their previous employer’s written consent. The agreement was reached on 19 October during a meeting between Cambodia’s ambassador to Thailand and Thailand’s director general of the Department ...
Almost 2,000 deported from Cambodia so far this year: report
Nearly 2,000 people have been deported from Cambodia – the vast majority of them Vietnamese – in the first nine months of 2015, according to new government figures. From January through September, 1,919 people were expelled from the Kingdom, a report issued by the General Department ...
Thai PM: Migrant workers’ dependents to be barred in 2017
Thailand will prohibit family members from joining migrant workers coming to Thailand from neighbouring countries beginning in 2017, Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha said 4 September. He hinted that health insurance and education costs for non-working spouses and children of foreign workers was creating a burden on government ...
New group formed to help Cambodian migrant workers in Thailand
A group of Cambodians in Thailand have formed an association to provide legal aid to the country’s Cambodian factory workers, saying the workers risk abuse due to their lack of proper documentation and knowledge of labour laws. Keep reading ...
Police interview Lao 'slaves' over trafficking
Thirteen illegal Lao labour immigrants who were rescued from an alleged “slavery farm” in Nakhon Pathom are being treated as witnesses in a suspected human trafficking case. The immigrants, some as young as 15 years old, will not be charged with illegal entry into Thailand because they ...
Lao workers 'caged' in slave case
A bank manager has been charged after 12 Lao workers — some as young as 14 — were found enslaved and kept in cages on a farm outside Bangkok. The workers, aged between 14 and 25 years old, were found sleeping in small spaces framed by ...
Myanmar migrants nickled and dimed in Thailand
Migrant rights groups have slammed the latest strategy to regularise undocumented Myanmar workers in Thailand as a money-making scheme. The current efforts to verify the Myanmar migrants and supply those eligible with passports has yet to even get under way, as the process is still mired in ...
Verification program begins but most migrants frozen out
Immigration teams from Myanmar have arrived in Thailand to conduct a long-awaited nationality verification process meant to regularise the status of over half a million workers caught in immigration limbo. The current plan involves sending out newly arrived representatives from the labour ministry, immigration department and ...
Lao officials keen to send illegal foreign workers packing
Local officials have been promising for several years to send illegal foreign workers back home but so far this hasn’t happened. Director General of Labour Management Department of the Ministry of Labour and Social Welfare, Mr Phongsaysack Inthalath spoke to Vientiane Times at a meeting in Vientiane ...
Migrant deadline passes in Thailand
Cambodian, Burmese and Laotian undocumented workers descended on Thailand’s one-stop service centres for visas and work permits before the closing deadline, as Thai authorities yesterday signalled a crackdown on illegal labour. More than 100,000 Cambodian workers in Thailand could face arrest and deportation after the deadline for ...