eNewsletter

The Thai government has recently performed a series of crackdowns on both local and foreign manufacturing facilities in the country to check for illegal migrant workers.  Under the new Thai Migrant Labor Law, all foreign workers in the country were to have obtained documentation by February 2010.  Many workers from neighboring Laos and Cambodia were able to obtain the necessary documentation without leaving Thailand through joint government programs between their countries and Thailand.  Tens of thousands of Burmese workers, however, remain in Thailand without paperwork, due in part to a reported lack of cooperation by the Burmese government and unwillingness of workers to risk returning to politically volatile Burma to obtain citizenship documents.

June 2010 raids of factories in Thailand lead to the arrest of nearly 3,000 undocumented workers as well as several factory owners.  According to the Thai media, as many as 10,000 Burmese workers have been deported.  While the Thai government claims that this crackdown is necessary to maintain an organized immigration system, many companies with factories in Thailand employing foreign workers fear that the consequences may be detrimental to productivity.  Even many of those foreign migrant workers who are in Thailand legally fear that they could be harassed or even deported by authorities.

Estimates show that there are still more than 1 million undocumented migrant workers in Thailand, most of them working in the manufacturing and construction industries.  Foreign companies doing business in Thailand should keep clear documentation of their employees’ work authorization status in Thailand to avoid raids or disturbances to their workers.