Immigration News: April, 2004 - Volume #11

Thailand: New Migrant Policies

Thailand is decentralizing its guest worker policies. As migrants moved into Thailand from its poorer neighbors, Burma, Cambodia and Laos, the government in the 1990s responded with an employer-based registration system that allowed employers to register and thus legalize their migrants for one year, after which the migrants were to depart. As the end of each registration approached, employers requested another, and the government agreed, progressively expanding the number of provinces and sectors in which employers were allowed to legalize their migrants.

By 2001, employers in all sectors and provinces were allowed to register their migrants, and 152,718 employers registered 568,249 migrants, about 85 percent Burmese.

There were problems with registration. The Bt4,450 fee for a 12-month work permit, which included a Bt1,000 deposit and a Bt1,300 health care fee, was often paid by the employer and deducted from migrants' wages, which were about Bt2,500 a month. Many employers complained if the registered migrant ran away before the fee was recouped in wage deductions, and were frustrated that there was also no legal way to replace registered migrants who ran away. Registered migrants complained that many employers kept their registration cards, so that they were still vulnerable to police harassment even though registration fees had been paid. Finally, farmers who employed migrants only seasonally, especially in border areas with Burma, found the fee too high in relation to their workers' earnings.

The number of migrants re-registered in 2002 fell to 120,171 employers registering 409,339 migrants, and fell further to 89,409 employers registering 288,780 migrants in 2003; their registration ends September 25, 2004. Thailand is thus grappling with about 300,000 registered migrants and 800,000 unauthorized migrants.

The Thai government in 2004 announced a new approach to migration management. It is based on decentralized administration, allowing additional guest workers to enter under bilateral MOUs, and promoting economic development in border areas of labor-sending countries. The Thai government intends to place a countrywide ceiling on the number of migrants, likely to be 500,000, and to allocate this quota to provinces based on their shares of registered migrants in 2001-03. A committee chaired by the appointed governor in each province will allocate provincial quotas by sector, and employers will register migrants until the quota is exhausted.

There are no plans to admit additional migrants until unauthorized workers currently in Thailand are registered. Under the bilateral MOUs, Thai employers are to advertise the jobs they would like to fill with migrants for 15 days and, if no Thais are available, migrants can be admitted under the MOU. The employer is to specify the skills needed, and the labor-sending country is to select migrants, who will travel to Thailand without their families to work for an initial two years, with the possibility of a two-year renewal followed by a mandatory three-year stay at home. While in Thailand, migrants contribute 15 percent of their earnings to a savings fund. These forced savings are to be refunded with interest to migrants who return at the end of the contract, although the Thai government reserved the right to tap the fund to cover the cost of deporting unauthorized workers.

While employed under contract in Thailand, migrants are to be treated as local workers, guaranteed the same wages and benefits, and may travel in and out of Thailand, and labor-sending countries agreed to cooperate to reduce migrant smuggling. Finally, the Thai government announced that it no longer needed foreign aid, and that it would be providing foreign aid and promoting investment in labor-sending areas, thus helping to stimulate development.

The new Thai policy is anchored on a local-area survey being conducted by the heads of the 70,000 villages, who are to report migrants by sector to district and provincial offices of the Ministry of Interior. The migrants reported are to be registered by their Thai employers if there are slots available, and the Thai government will ask labor-sending governments to issue identity documents to their nationals who do not have them (many Burmese do not have government-issued IDs). The expectation is that there will be no new admissions for several years, as currently unauthorized migrants are registered, and then return after two or four years, giving labor-sending governments time to establish systems to select and assess potential migrants.

Most of the migrants in Thailand are from Burma, a country ruled by a military junta and subject to trade sanctions. Many of the Burmese living near the Thai border are ethnic minorities subject to discriminatory treatment by the central government in Rangoon. Many border-area Burmese do not have Burmese citizenship, which makes them ineligible for government services. The Thai press reported in January 2004 that some pregnant Burmese women committed crimes in Thailand so that they could receive food and delivery services in Thai hospitals.

Thai factory owners in Tak province bordering Burma have reportedly developed a blacklist of "troublemakers," Thai and Burmese activists aiming to help Burmese migrants. Some factories have not paid migrants, or not paid them full wages, and one, Thai-owned Nasawat Apparel Co, failed to pay 257 migrants $421,000 in back wages despite an order from the labor ministry. Thai labor law specifies a minimum wage of 133 baht ($3.50) for an eight-hour shift, and an overtime rate 25 baht per hour ($0.70 ); Nasawat was paying 50 baht for eight hours, and eight baht for overtime.

Thais Abroad. There are about 180,000 Thais employed abroad, and the government announced a target of having 200,000 Thais employed abroad. Thailand aims to improve their pre-departure orientation to increase their protections and remittances.

Thailand is introducing unemployment insurance in July 2004, financed by employer and worker contributions of five percent each to the social security system on the first 15,000 baht earned each month; previously, workers and employers each contributed 4.5 percent. Unemployed workers will be able to receive payments of up to 50 percent of their previous earnings for up to 90 days. (www.sso.go.th)

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