7 hours ago, jerry921 said:

And where are all the open borders advocates? Where's the pope? How come none of them have stepped forward to sponsor any of these kids for US green cards? Don't they have a basic human right to immigrate to the US, or at a minimum England? They rescued them, they should get to keep them. International Right of Salvage, isn't it?

 

Now that the whole media circus thing has subsided, this will be 'last week's news' in about... ooh, about 1 week; more or less.

 

Watch it happen, the UK has forgotten it already - Trump's there now.

 

International Right of Salvage - love it.

It's really bad for many of these stateless children! I used to have students that were ethnic Karen, they hade to get special provisions from some government agency to travel to compete (work skills) in other provinces/nationaly. And the same, they could study but not graduate/get a degree as they didn't have a social security number (Thai or foreign). 

And the thing is that most of those  families have come to Thailand  sometime between the end of WWII and the 1980's, so I had students that were born here, their parents were born here, and in some cases even their grandparents were born here in Thailand and still not being considered to be Thai! 

Yesterday I travelled from Mai Sai to Chiang Rai by local bus. We were stopped at two checkpoints at which we were required to provide id.documents. In front of me was a young hill tribe woman with a baby. She had no id. card, just a sheet of A4 folded into a plastic sleeve.

At both checkpoints, her papers were examined and her bags rummaged. The first was manned by local policemen supervised by a soldier,  they were faintly apologetic. The second checkpoint was run by what I can only describe as strutting stormtroopers, in black fatigues with green and blue neckscarves. and blue berets. Their shoulder flashes described them as "Royal Thai Army". This time the contents of her bag were upended onto the seat beside her, her id papers were dropped on the seat after scrutiny by the goon who checked her out, the baby started crying, and the bus was waved on its way. The bus conductor (male. in his 50s) apologetically helped her with her bag, I picked up a couple of items which had fallen on the floor, another lady passenger helped to soothe the baby. The tension in the bus was palpable.

 

That is the reality for these unfortunate people. Discriminated against and mistreated by the state in which they have in all probability been born, and perhaps their parents born.

 

I have recently read the late Airey Neave MC's book "They Have Their Exits". It tells of witnessing the treatment of Polish civilians under occupation. This would not have been out of place in that book, except this was 2018 in a developed country which holds itself up as an example to the world. No doubt other countries would be quoted as "understanding the unique situation..."