Population

Thailand is preparing to take migrant workers from three other ASEAN nations under memorandums of understanding (MoUs) for the upcoming ASEAN Economic Community. Labour Minister General Sirichai Dithakul met on 22 December with delegates from Vietnam, Myanmar and Cambodia to discuss the MOUs. Thailand has already signed MoUs with Myanmar and ...

A foreign tourist was arrested and three illegal migrant workers detained when Pattaya police raided popular Walking Street nightspots as part of a pre-New Year’s immigration crackdown. More than 100 officers from a special operations unit and Pattaya police station took part in the late-night sweep ...

Thai authorities have detained 43 Lao women, some of whom appear underage, for illegally entering the country to work in the sex trade just two days after the Lao parliament passed an anti-human trafficking law to ensure protection for victims and punishments for perpetrators. Passed on ...

The Myanmar government’s labour recruitment offices are failing, leaving workers to scrounge for jobs through informal networks rife with opportunistic brokers, according to a new report. In the absence of a functioning, official employment system, the vast majority of over 7000 workers interviewed – 72 percent ...

More Montagnard asylum seekers are planning to return to home amid cuts in United Nations-provided food rations. Vivian Tan, regional spokesperson for the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), said more than 10 indigenous Christian Montagnards had requested assistance in returning to Vietnam. She said the group had decided ...

Pervasive human trafficking has helped turn Thailand into one of the world’s biggest shrimp providers. Despite repeated promises by businesses and government to clean up the country’s US$7 billion seafood export industry, an Associated Press investigation has found shrimp peeled by modern-day slaves is reaching ...

When Vu Thi Linh moved her family from their spacious rural home to a tiny rented room in Hanoi, she hoped her children would be able to get the education she never had.   The Linhs are among hundreds of thousands of people moving to Vietnam’s bulging ...

Cambodia has signed a long-anticipated agreement to resume the legal flow of domestic workers to Malaysia, putting an end to a ban introduced more than four years ago amid reports of serious migrant abuses, which had led to multiple deaths. A statement released on 10 December evening ...

Ageing populations will hit Asia hard, but younger, poorer countries like Cambodia will buck the trend for several decades, the World Bank found in a massive demographic study released on 9 December. While working-age populations will shrink 10 per cent in countries like China, Thailand and ...

The Immigration Bureau plans to fine and blacklist foreigners who overstay their visas from March or April next year. Bureau chief Pol Lt Gen Nathathorn Prausoontorn said on 9 December that Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha had approved the bureau’s proposal on Nov 27 to fine and ban ...