Immigration

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

More Montagnard asylum seekers prepared to return to Vietnam on 23 November after giving up on obtaining refugee status in Phnom Penh, while five Rohingya refugees set off for resettlement in Canada. Wan-Hea Lee, country representative of the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human ...

Thailand’s Department of Employment is vowing to take legal action against foreigners who work illegally as models in the country.  The action comes following a complaint by the Thai Modelling Industry and Agencies Association, saying a number of foreign models, both men and women, disguise themselves as tourists ...

The Immigration Bureau has asked Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha to exercise his special powers to issue a ban on foreigners found guilty of overstaying in Thailand from re-entering the country for one to 10 years. The move is aimed at cutting the number of illegal migrants ...

With the deadline looming for hundreds of Montagnard asylum seekers in Cambodia to return “voluntarily” to the site of their alleged persecution or be forced back across the border, a group who have spent months living in the shadows this week spoke out about their ...

The Cambodian government on 20 October announced that it has extended deadlines for all Montagnard refugees and unregistered asylum seekers to leave Cambodia. Keep reading ...

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 ...